Alabama running back Trent Richardson and his teammates managed one loss in what was widely regarded as the nation's toughest conference.  If you're looking for outrage, you've come to the wrong place.  Is it disappointing that college football's title game is a rematch? Yes. Unfair? Not really.  But is LSU-Alabama the best possible matchup, based on a qualitative judgment of this season? Without question. Which is why my torch and pitchfork are staying in the shed for now, at least until the next Bowl Championship Series controversy.  There are two basic problems with this year's so-called injustice, in which 11-1 Alabama was selected to play unbeaten LSU in a rematch over 11-1 Oklahoma State.  The first is that it's not clear there was injustice done.  Leave aside for a moment whether rematches should be allowed, whether only conference winners should be considered and the sundry other biased criteria that are selectively used to make the desired point. Let's just consider: Which team, Alabama or Oklahoma State, is better?  Alabama ranks 30th nationally in total offense and first in total defense. Oklahoma State is third and 107th. Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy says there's no way his defense is truly 107th. It could be a distortion that's owed to how many plays the Cowboys' up-tempo offense forces their defense to play—an assertion supported by the Cowboys' 44-10 beatdown of Oklahoma on Saturday. Very well then: In terms of yards gained and allowed per play, Alabama ranks 10th offensively, first defensively. Oklahoma State is third and 52nd.  Alabama defeated all of its opponents (with one obvious exception) by no fewer than 16 points. Oklahoma State was down 17 at halftime to Texas A&M and was even with Kansas State with three minutes left. The only opponent that gave Alabama any trouble was LSU, hands down the best team during the regular season. Oklahoma State, which did not play LSU, couldn't get past Iowa State.  You could look at all of this and say it doesn't prove Alabama is superior. That's fine. But what you can't do is say it proves Oklahoma State is superior. There's just no basis for that assertion, and thus no cause for concluding that the Cowboys are getting jobbed.  It would be so much easier to get riled up if there were some villains here, which brings us to our other problem with this controversy: There aren't any.  There's no Mack Brown—no one shamelessly lobbying for his team (and thus against someone else's), as the Texas coach did during the Rose Bowl debate of 2004. Nor did Alabama behave like Florida, which in 2006 was politicking for its title-game inclusion over Michigan—from the players to the coach to the school president.  There's been this insane rush to paint the Southeastern Conference (and Alabama by extension) as hypocritical for being against the Michigan-Ohio State rematch then and for an LSU-Alabama rematch now. Well, sure, the SEC undoubtedly does want its teams to play in the championship game, just as any conference would.  But what does Alabama have to do with Florida? Nick Saban wasn't even at Alabama during the Michigan/Florida debate. The Crimson Tide coach was still with the Miami Dolphins at the time, and thus had nothing to do with how Florida controversially leapfrogged Michigan in the final regular-season coaches poll.  The unending arguing over college football's postseason has just about reached the level of politics and religion—an issue so fraught with emotion and disagreement, you almost can't have a polite, intelligent discussion about it. Each who's-No. 2 debate that comes up each year isn't a simple matter to be decided on the merits. It's a proxy war for settling old scores, dredging up past slights, supporting preferred teams and conferences and opposing despised ones. Everything that happens is proof that your pet playoff proposal must be instituted.  It is disappointing that the title game is a rematch, if only because there are so few opportunities in this sport to see top teams from different conferences meet. But otherwise: What's there to be upset about? The two best teams are playing each other.  Write to Darren Everson at Darren.Everson@wsj.com
A rematch in college football's title game may not be popular, but it does happen to pit the country's two best teams against each other, says Darren Everson.