Two Pennsylvania football teams with two losses apiece.
One is out of the national championship hunt, the other is still a favorite.
The first is the Penn State Nittany Lions and the second is the Philadelphia Eagles.
Both can stake claims to being among the elite football teams in their respective playing arenas. One will get the chance to prove it and the other will not.
It's tough to swallow for Penn State fans, who don't need vivid imaginations to see how their team could be 6-0.
Forget even the bad calls. Sure, had Tony Johnson been ruled in bounds at the Big House the Lions could have walked away with a regulation victory and would probably be ranked in the top ten right now.
The fact is, Penn State still went to overtime and did not get the job done. Same deal with Iowa. Bad call or no bad call, the Lions did not score a touchdown in either case.
But does two close losses mean that Penn State is really not among the top teams in the nation? In college football it does.
And that's a shame.
If Penn State beats Ohio State this weekend and wins out, it will finish 10-2 and probably among the top 10 in the BCS.
Which is all fine and nice and will look pretty, but it won't mean a shot at proving they're the best.
The current BCS format allows for the No. 1 and No. 2 teams to play in the designated national championship game each year.
Last year, that meant that Nebraska, ranked fourth in both voters' polls and coming off a 62-36 loss to Colorado in the Big 12 Championship, got to play the Miami Hurricanes. The 'Huskers only edged out Colorado because of the result of an obscure game somewhere in the country that determined Nebraska's strength of schedule.
Nebraska beat exactly two ranked teams last year: a lousy Notre Dame team ranked 17th in September and an Oklahoma team that was not as good as its No. 2 ranking at the end of October.
So it ended like this: BCS No. 2 Nebraska, the fourth-ranked team in the nation according to both major polls, played BCS No. 1 Miami for the national championship while unanimous No. 2 Oregon played unanimous No. 3 Colorado, who had obliterated Nebraska a month earlier. Unanimous according to voters, that is. The computers disagreed, placing Colorado as the BCS No. 3 and Oregon at No. 4.
How does it work though? There are a bunch of computer polls, the strength of schedule and something called quality wins. All of these things are nicely wrapped around a mathematical formula that was put in place because subjectivity was supposedly ruining the rankings before the BCS.
And the math has failed. It's too out there for the common fan to understand and the computers are, well, not human enough.
College football purists will argue that the importance placed on the regular season by the BCS format is a unique and integral part of the game. That part might be true.
But think about the big stories in other sports. Right now in baseball, it's the Anaheim Angels. Last year in football, it was the New England Patriots. Last Stanley Cup, the Carolina Hurricanes.
All were longshots that played their best at the end of the year.
And so, to the Nittany Lions.
Head coach Joe Paterno, a long-time supporter of college football playoffs, said this after beating Northwestern: "We just try to get better each game and see how far we've come by the end of the year."
That's how it should be in football, or any team sport. It's about growing and learning from game to game.
So, hypothetically, Penn State beats Ohio State, runs the table and finishes eighth in the BCS and plays for pride.
Or, they could be the final entry in an eight-team playoff, play their best football and ... At least the Eagles will win the Super Bowl.
