Mike Gundy: We'd have thrown it 50 times and made the game more entertaining

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This is what the Bowl Championship Series wrought. A title game with a single touchdown. Alabama's field goals and LSU's empty possessions piling up in the Superdome.

"I will say this," Mike Gundy said as Alabama closed in on Monday night's 21-0 win against LSU. "I bet you there'll be a lot of people wish they'd given us a shot to see a different kind of game."

Oklahoma State's coach spoke by phone from a hotel room in San Antonio, more than 500 miles away. He took the game in on television, his frustration welling.

The defenses were good, yes — playing fast, physical, big-boy football as LSU coach Les Miles is fond of calling it. But it looked like his offense was in a shell, keeping things conservative, challenging nobody down the field or on the corners.

Not the way Gundy and the Cowboys would have played it. Or at least tried.

"We'd have thrown it 50 times," he said. "You like to think Brandon Weeden and Justin Blackmon could have put together some touchdowns. Get the ball thrown down the field and open some things up. Try to make it exciting, and see what happens."

It's what carried Oklahoma State and the nation's second-highest scoring offense through a 12-1 season that Gundy and his players felt — and still do — merited them a place in Monday's game. Instead, they finished up a week earlier in the Fiesta Bowl, outgunning Andrew Luck and Stanford 41-38 in overtime.

Six times in their 13 games, the Cowboys piled up more than 50 points. Three times, they hit 60. Weeden, their 28-year-old senior quarterback, was a higher-rated passer than any Alabama or LSU had seen in the more ground-based Southeastern Conference.

Could he and Blackmon, a two-time Biletnikoff Award winner as the nation's top receiver, have sliced into either of the nation's two best defenses? Could his offensive line have given him the time?

"You sure would like to have had a shot at it," Gundy said.

"It kind of hurts to watch it. I just think we could score. We'd use all 52 yards across (the width of) the field. Get people on the edges. Use the vertical game."

In New Orleans a night earlier to accept a coach-of-the-year award, he'd detailed why he saw the Cowboys as a threat to even the nation's best defenses. "If you have a good quarterback at almost any level," he said, "you have a chance to win games. It's the one position that makes all the difference — high school, peewee, college, NFL. Not a guarantee, but you've got a really good chance.

"For the most part in the last couple of years, we've been able to move the ball and score points against about anybody we played. … It's been talked about all year from coast to coast: Big 12 offenses, SEC defenses, how do we really know if anybody's really any good? That (a showdown in the BCS title game) would have been the best way to find out."

Back in December, Gundy reminded his players that the national championship wasn't entirely out of Oklahoma State's reach. Alabama landed in Monday's game by the slimmest of margins — .0086 of a point over the Cowboys — and a Crimson Tide win against unbeaten, top-ranked LSU could open the door to a split title — a final No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press media poll.

That is, if it had been ugly. Flukish. Controversial.

'Bama's dominant defensive performance was anything but that. When its offense tacked on the game's only touchdown in game's final five minutes, Gundy conceded, "I'd say that lessens our opportunity to sneak in."

Gundy was right: The Cowboys ended up third in the final USA TODAY coaches poll, 37 points behind No. 2 LSU.

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