That fantastic line comes from one of my all time favorite bad comedies, Billy Madison. It serves as the tail end of Brian Madison's (played by the always fantastic Darren McGavin) recap of the dire situation in which the main characters find themselves and is followed by the words, "What a mess." It always struck me as a hilarious way of wrapping up a truly absurd set of circumstances (and not just because Aaron Sorkin all-star Bradley Whitford plays the villainous Eric) and it became the catch phrase of choice for me and my buddies whenever things had gone horribly wrong.

It's been years since I've felt compelled to sigh and exclaim "and now Eric's secretary is in a coma" in order to truly express how messed up something has become. But the current BCS landscape is enough to bring it all back. Because this is one hell of a mess.

As it stands, the only sure thing about the BCS championship game is that the winner of Saturday's Ohio State-Michigan showdown will be playing in it. After that, all bets are off.

The sheer number of absurd possibilities is enough to boggle the mind. Here are the seven teams that seem to have a shot at snagging that all-important #2 spot (I would use an Austin Powers quote about "Number Two" here, but that movie got real dated, real quick, so I'm going to pass):

Ohio State. Things will be a lot easier for everyone if the Buckeyes win on Saturday. Sort of. The big thing is that Ohio State's presence in the title game would dramatically reduce the odds of "BCS Armageddon" occurring.

BCS Armageddon goes like this: two teams meet in the title game who have already played during the season and the team that lost earlier winds up winning the "championship game" and the two teams finish with identical records overall and against each other. Except that the team that won on the road (and therefore is the slightly more impressive candidate) loses the title to the team that won on a neutral field. Confused? If you are, it is probably because this makes no intuitive sense whatsoever. But there are two scenarios in which this can happen. If Michigan State beats Ohio State on Saturday and the two are pitted in a rematch, the Wolverines would face that exact scenario. Michigan would also confront that prospect if matched up against Notre Dame in the title game. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The point is that an undefeated Michigan in the BCS game opens the door for them to wind up playing against a one-loss team they have already defeated on the road during the regular season. Should they lose that rematch, they would, in turn, lose the national title despite splitting the "series," boasting an identical record, and having won the only road game between the two squads. People aren't really pondering this now, but trust me, there will be much hand-wringing if it goes down like this. All of which means that Ohio State makes for a pretty safe option as the #1 team.