Without power rankings, SWAC settles for coins

• By PERRYN KEYS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Nov 26, 2008 - UPDATED: 7:10 a.m.

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If the Southwestern Athletic Conference only had a BCS poll to go by, it wouldn’t need a messy little coin flip to determine its Western Division champion.

That’s what the league will face if Southern defeats Grambling in the Bayou Classic on Saturday afternoon.

Basically, the Big 12 South Division could face the same situation the SWAC West is facing right now — having three teams who finish in a tie for first place, with each school having finished 1-1 against the other two.

If it comes to that, the Big 12 South team with the highest BCS ranking will advance to the conference championship game.

But Commissioner Duer Sharp said he’d like to see someone develop a power poll for black colleges.

“I wish we had a poll where there were no coaches’ votes, and it was just computerized, and we could go to that,” Sharp said Tuesday morning at the Superdome.

“But it would be unfair for us to change the tiebreaker this season and go to a strength-of-opponent. Right there, you’d have someone say, ‘Hey, If I would’ve known that, I would’ve scheduled some other teams.’ So for us, we thought the fairest way to do break this tie was the three-team coin flip.”

An SU win this weekend would force a three-way flip between Southern, Grambling and Prairie View for the right to face Jackson State in the SWAC title game in Birmingham, Ala., on Dec. 13.

The flip, if necessary, will happen Sunday in New Orleans at “an undisclosed location,” and the school presidents would do the honors, Sharp said.

The odd team out will be eliminated. The two remaining teams will settle their tie based on head-to-head results during the regular season.

In other words, to earn a spot in the title game, Southern first has to beat Grambling on Saturday. Then, on Sunday, Southern needs for Prairie View to be the odd team out on the three-way coin flip.

As for a power-rating system in black college football ... would it ever happen? Sharp said he’d like to see it, but he doesn’t know if even that method would be a fair.