By Mike Kays

Phoenix Sports Editor

I just finished giving my laptop a good cleaning. Ran a hard drive cleaner twice.

I’ll do the same today with my office computer.

It’s the least I can do. Technology, for all its impersonal irritations, scored a victory for sanity in the recent Bowl Championship Series rankings. It fought off the political persuasion of Mack Brown and reminded us that numbers do mean things, something a first-grader knows well when it comes to the numbers three and two.

For the umpteenth time, Mack Brown, it was a three-way tie for the Big 12 South. Not a two-way deadlock. Bob Stoops, who in a much classier move than was depicted in your week-long efforts declined to interrupt your team’s stage time on Thursday to plead his case, would have gladly handed you the title had Texas Tech been upended by Baylor on Saturday. Sixty points in four games, including 61 on Saturday against a team I’ll say now will be in this position next year, wouldn’t have mattered in a two-way tie.

Indeed, the computers recognized all this too, along with the reality of a stronger schedule. OU beat BCS bowl-bound Cincinnati and near-BCS qualifier TCU. Texas points proudly to a Missouri victory in that admittedly tough four-game stretch in midseason that began with OU and ended with Tech. But Missouri got beat by Kansas on Saturday. Oh, and that preseason Horns feast of Florida International, UTEP, Arkansas and Rice? There’s some quality points for you.

The computers went for the Sooners. Now, the pressure is on Stoops and Co. Imagine the outcry from Austin and certain ESPN heads and various others with voting privileges if Missouri posts an upset on Saturday. Despite its loss last week, the Tigers, at 9-3 and looking like a sub-par bowl candidate, could avenge the way they were done by the BCS last season when after winning the North, got bypassed by the Orange Bowl for North runner-up Kansas. That, and playing on essentially a home field, could be motivation enough for wrecking the whole process.

But if OU should prevail, I have a question for Mack: Since you’ve been quite fond of two-team conversations in the past few days, in the name of the fairness you felt your team was denied because that conversation didn’t prevail, will you stand on your principles and ask the BCS to give your Fiesta Bowl spot to Texas Tech? After all, 39-33 in a two-team conversation should speak just as loudly as 45-35.

At least in your mind. Right?