"I would never have taken this ass of a job if you'd told me that you expected me to beat Texas and Oklahoma with competent officiating! That's for damn sure not what I signed up for!"

Big XII officiating is to "football" as George W. Bush is to "global peace and prosperity," but for Mike Leach, of all coaches, to cry about biased officiating is pretty close to the 27th Death of Irony. It was Leach's 2005 Texas Tech team, you may recall, that was the only Big 12 team ever to score a winning touchdown after the game had ended, with officials helped along by highly intimidating Lubbock crowd noise, either fear or inability to call what they saw, and conference management that simply did not care whether games are officiated correctly or not.

It would not surprise me if Leach was really trying to soften up the officials to cut him slack as OU returns to Lubbock this weekend for the first time since the 2005 debacle, in the hopes that maybe this time his team can get points for scoring during time-outs. Texas Tech is 7-4 overall, but 3-4 in conference play and has no shot at winning its division. Saturday's game is the season finale for the Red Raiders, and will help determine if they get to go to the Holiday Bowl or Gator Bowl, or if they'll travel to San Antonio for the post-season. This is the game that their fans will remember in the off-season, and their last win at home over OU was a flat-out gift from the Big 12.

OU, on the other hand, clinches the Big 12 South division with a win at Lubbock on Saturday night. Even if the Sooners went on to lose to OSU and fall out of the national title picture, OU would end up 6-2 in conference play, winning any potential tie-breaker with Texas due to the Sooners' victory in the Red River Rivalry earlier this season. OSU's best possible outcome is if OU and Texas both lose all their remaining games and OSU wins out—but even in that case, OSU can't win the division. OSU, OU, and Texas would all be 5-3 in conference play, but the first Big 12 tiebreaker is comparing the teams' overall records. In this theoretical case, OU and Texas would be 9-3 and OSU would be 7-5, dropping the Cowboys from the tie-breaker. With just two teams left, OU would then win the tie-breaker by virtue of the victory over Texas.

Either OU or Texas wins the 2007 Big 12 South division. OU gets the title with just one more win; Texas must beat Texas A&M and still needs OU to lose both of its remaining games to play for the conference championship. The very best Texas Tech can do is third in the division, and even that only if OSU loses both of its remaining games, meaning that OSU has to lose to Baylor on Saturday for Tech to finish higher than fourth in the six-team division.

Given all that, if you were Mike Leach, wouldn't you try to soften up the conference referees by claiming bias in the hopes of receiving more free points? It's not like playing football by the rules is working out too well for them, you know.