Happy Monday to you. Hope you enjoyed your weekend. A few, random thoughts for you here as we get the week underway:

- The happiest people in America today are at Fox Sports. Before the start of the weekend, it looked like they'd be left with a Missouri vs West Virginia BCS national championship game. But thanks to Oklahoma's trouncing of Missouri and West Virginia's epic choke job at home to 4-7 Pittsburgh (West Virginia was favored by 28 points), the people at Fox have now been presented with an early Christmas gift - a Ohio State vs LSU BCS national championship game. Nobody outside of Missouri and West Virginia would have watched those two schools match up on January 7th, but many people are likely to tune in to a game featuring the Buckeyes and the Tigers - two traditional college football powers.......that just happen to travel very well to bowl games. And it doesn't hurt the game's organizers that the home state LSU Tigers will be playing in the game. Tickets for this one will be snapped up quickly.

- Can someone explain to me how Missouri, ranked 6th in the latest BCS standings, is left out of a BCS game and Kansas, ranked 8th in the latest BCS standings, is given a BCS bid when Missouri soundly defeated the Jayhawks just a few weeks ago? Kansas will play Virginia Tech (and lose) in the Orange Bowl while Missouri will play Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. Oh and by the way, Missouri's payout for the Cotton Bowl will be about $3M as compared to Kansas' payout which will top $17M. I know, I know, the money is split with conference members after expenses, but wouldn't you rather split $17M than $3M??

- Arizona State also got the shaft. Dennis Erickson's Sun Devils went 10-2 (with losses to Oregon and USC) and they miss out on a BCS game. They'll play in the Holiday Bowl against Texas (payout of about $2M) instead of the Fiesta Bowl ($17M payout).

- This is still the best alternative to the current BCS system that I've seen.

- Which bowl am I looking forward to the most? I think the Sugar Bowl between Georgia and undefeated Hawaii will be this bowl season's version of the Oklahoma vs Boise State thriller we saw this past January.

- Biggest mismatch? Pete Carroll and his USC Trojans will win by at least two touchdowns against Illinois. And what in the world was the Rose Bowl thinking taking Illinois over Florida in this game? I get the "tradition" of a Pac-10 vs Big-10 matchup, but wouldn't a game featuring the nation's two best coaches (Pete Carroll and Urban Meyer) and two teams that normally wouldn't play each other be much more exciting? Give Carroll and Meyer a few weeks to prepare for a game and both are very tough to beat. This would have been a great game and a TV ratings bonanza. The ratings for this game would have been higher than for the Ohio State vs LSU national championship game.

- I guess Seattle Sonics owner Clay Bennett may have a point afterall when he says that Key Arena is not an adequate facility for his NBA team. They can't even make it through a game without the arena scoreboard catching fire (too bad the Sonics shooters don't catch fire like this every now and again).

- Felt terrible for Redskins Head Coach Joe Gibbs yesterday. As if his week hasn't been trying enough after the death of Redskins star Sean Taylor, he had a brain freeze yesterday and called two consecutive timeouts at the end of the game to try to ice Bills K Ryan Lindell. The 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct made Lindell's FG try a 36-yarder instead of a 50-yarder and the Redskins lost as time expired when Lindell split the uprights. Today Gibbs and team get to attend Taylor's funeral. Trying times for Gibbs.

- Emotional pre-game tribute to Sean Taylor before yesterday's Redskins - Bills game.

- If you missed this past weekend's edition of Sports Business Radio, you can listen via podcast here.

Enjoy your Monday.

UPDATE: As Shawn posts out in the comments, the BCS can not extend invites to more than 2 teams per conference. So the Big-10 (Ohio State and Illinois) and SEC (LSU and Georgia) will split up $21.5M from BCS games. Teams with only one team in the BCS will receive $17M which will be split by their conferences after bowl game expenses have been taken out. Figure about $1M for travel expenses per team.