Jets going with Mark Sanchez as starting QB

NEW YORK (AP) — Rex Ryan is sticking with Mark Sanchez as the New York Jets' starting quarterback.

The team announced Wednesday morning that Sanchez, benched last Sunday against Arizona, will get the start this week over Greg McElroy and Tim Tebow when the Jets play the Jaguars at Jacksonville.

Sanchez was pulled late in the third quarter, and McElroy came in and led the Jets to the only touchdown of the game on his first NFL drive and helped New York to a 7-6 victory. Sanchez was 10 of 21 for 97 and three interceptions, while McElroy was 5 of 7 for 29 yards and the score, and appeared to spark the team.

Ryan, who was scheduled to speak later Wednesday, said Monday that he needed "a little more time" to consult with his staff before making the decision for this week. It was perhaps the biggest call in Ryan's nearly four years as coach of the Jets, considering the sensitivity of the situation and the possible ramifications.

Sanchez, whose confidence was shaken with Sunday's miserable performance, gets a chance to bounce back from the first benching of his NFL career and to regain the trust of his teammates. He has struggled the last several weeks, with two touchdowns and five interceptions in his last four games. He'll likely be on a short leash against Jacksonville — with McElroy possibly ready to go.

"I'll just keep working, go study this film and keep trying to improve," Sanchez said Sunday after the game. "I need to understand where the mistakes came from, keep studying, keep preparing, be ready to play next week and see what happens."

It's uncertain if Tebow will be active against his hometown Jaguars after sustaining two broken ribs. He was medically cleared by team doctors to play, but Ryan chose to keep him active but not play against New England on Thanksgiving night and then made him inactive against Arizona.

If Ryan went with McElroy, a seventh-round pick in 2011 out of Alabama, it would have been a clear message that the franchise is moving on from Sanchez.

However, money could have played a role, too, with Sanchez owed $8.25 million next year in guarantees. The Jets are likely stuck with Sanchez and his contract, so they need to see if he can rebound. If he can't, it will be an intriguing offseason for New York, especially since Tebow has not played much since being acquired from Denver in March and might not be back next year.

It didn't appear that Tebow was much of a factor in Ryan's decision. Ryan said all three quarterbacks would be in the mix, but didn't want to speculate as to whether he would have pulled Sanchez in favor of Tebow last Sunday if he were active.

Tebow was expected to have a major role in the offense, but instead has been just a spare part averaging about seven offensive snaps per game. He has been listed as the No. 2 quarterback on the depth chart, but if the Jets turned to McElroy, it would have meant that the No. 3 guy leapfrogged Tebow to start for the Jets.

Although Ryan said it wouldn't factor into his decision, the fact the team is playing on the road for the next two games should also help Sanchez.

He was booed mercilessly by the MetLife Stadium crowd last Sunday, particularly after each interception, and chants for McElroy were heard throughout the game. McElroy was cheered as he warmed up late in the third quarter, and there was growing sentiment among some fans and media that he earned a start after lifting the team.

The Jets are hoping he also sparked Sanchez, whom they deemed the face of the franchise just a few years ago when they traded up in the draft in 2009 and took him with the fifth overall pick. He helped lead New York to consecutive trips to the AFC championship game for the first time in team history, but it has been a bumpy ride since. Sanchez has been criticized the last two seasons for failing to take the next step in his development, and Ryan has been knocked for sticking with the quarterback for too long.

The two have been joined at the hip, and stand side-by-side during the national anthem before every game. Ryan was seen in the locker room consoling Sanchez after the game, his arm on his shoulder as the two spoke for a few minutes. Until last Sunday, the threat of being benched — even with Tebow on the roster — didn't appear to be a real possibility.

Now, Ryan has sent the message to Sanchez: Perform or else. And, Sanchez gets one more shot to save his job this season — and his status as the Jets' franchise quarterback.

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Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs as well might be taken for a longer duration.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them would be in premenopausal women with ER-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing ten years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

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DealBook: Freeport to Buy Plains Exploration and McMoRan

Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold said on Wednesday that it would buy two oil and natural gas companies, Plains Exploration and Production and the McMoRan Exploration Company, in a return to the energy business.

The two transactions will create a natural resources titan worth about $60 billion, including debt, and will formally reunite Freeport with McMoRan, the oil exploration company it spun off in 1994.

Under the terms of the deals, Freeport will pay about $6.9 billion in cash and stock for Plains. That offer consists of $25 a share in cash and 0.6531 of a Freeport share, worth about $50 a share based on Tuesday’s closing prices.

And Freeport will pay $14.75 a share in cash and 1.15 units of a trust that will hold a 5 percent interest in future production of McMoRan’s deepwater exploration operations. Freeport and Plains together already own about 36 percent of the smaller exploration company.

“This transaction will enable us to add assets with exceptional exploration and development potential to a world-class mining company to create a premier minerals and oil and gas business focused on value creation for shareholders,” James R. Moffett, Freeport’s chairman, said in a statement.

JPMorgan Chase is providing $9.5 billion to help pay for the cash portion of the deal and to repay some of Plains’s existing debt.

Freeport was advised by Credit Suisse and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Plains was advised by Barclays and the law firm Latham & Watkins. McMoRan was advised by Evercore Partners and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

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Assad Suffering Reversals in Fighting and Diplomacy

Thair Al-Khalidieh/Shaam News Network, via Reuters

A Free Syrian Army fighter battled government forces in Homs, Syria, on Monday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fierce fighting on the battlefield and setbacks on the diplomatic front increased pressure on the embattled Syrian government as fresh signs emerged on Tuesday of a sustained battle for control of the capital, Damascus.

News reports quoted activists as saying that fighting was raging in the southern suburbs of Damascus and near the international airport for a fifth straight day as government forces sought to dislodge rebels and reverse their recent gains.

While the government has superior firepower and rebels are reporting heavy losses, loyalist forces have been carrying out a serious counteroffensive in the suburbs without being able to subdue the insurgents.

The latest reports followed developments on Monday when a senior Turkish official said that Russia had agreed to a new diplomatic approach to seek ways to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power, a possible weakening in Russia’s steadfast support for the Syrian government.

In Damascus, a prominent Foreign Ministry spokesman was said to have left the country amid reports of his defection, and President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued warnings that any use of chemical weapons by a desperate government would be met with a strong international response. The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, echoed this warning on Tuesday.

“The possible use of chemical weapons would be completely unacceptable to the whole international community,” Mr. Rasmussen said, according to Agence France-Presse.

A Western diplomat confirmed that there were grave concerns in United States intelligence circles that Syrian leaders could resort to the use of the weapons as their position deteriorates.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry, repeating earlier statements, told state television that the government “would not use chemical weapons, if it had them, against its own people under any circumstances.”

The United Nations said it was withdrawing nonessential international staff from Syria, and the European Union said it was reducing activities in Damascus “to a minimum,” as security forces pummeled the suburbs with artillery and airstrikes in a struggle to seal off the city from its restive outskirts and control the airport road. A senior Russian official spoke for the first time in detail about the possibility of evacuating Russian citizens.

The United Nations World Food Program reported on Tuesday that “the recent escalation of violence in Syria is making it more difficult to reach the country’s hardest-hit areas.”

“Food insecurity is on the rise due to bread shortages and higher food prices in many parts of the country. High prices are also affecting neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees,” the organization said in a statement.

“Road access to and from Damascus has become more dangerous, making it difficult to dispatch food from World Food Program warehouses to some parts of the country, the organization said, adding that there had been increasing indiscriminate attacks on its trucks in different parts of the country.

It also said it would relocate seven nonessential staff members to neighboring Jordan while about “20 international and 100 national W.F.P. staff remain in the country to carry out the emergency operation to feed 1.5 million vulnerable Syrians.” Mr. Assad has held on longer than many had predicted at the start of the 21-month uprising. He still has a strong military advantage and undiminished support from his closest ally, Iran. Military analysts doubt the rebels are capable of taking Damascus by force, and one fighter interviewed on Monday said the government counteroffensive was taking a heavy toll. There were still no firm indications from Russia that it was ready to join Turkey and Western nations in insisting on Mr. Assad’s immediate departure.

But the latest grim developments follow a week of events that suggested the Assad government was being forced to fight harder to keep its grip on power. Rebels threatened its vital control of the skies, using surface-to-air missiles to down a fighter plane and other aircraft. The opposition also gained control of strategic military bases and their arsenals, and forced the government to shut down the Damascus airport periodically. The Internet was off for two days.

A Russian political analyst with contacts at the Foreign Ministry said that “people sent by the Russian leadership” who had contact with Mr. Assad two weeks ago described a man who has lost all hope of victory or escape.

“His mood is that he will be killed anyway,” Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of a Russian foreign affairs journal and the head of an influential policy group, said in an interview in Moscow, adding that only an “extremely bold” diplomatic proposal could possibly convince Mr. Assad that he could leave power and survive.

“If he will try to go, to leave, to exit, he will be killed by his own people,” Mr. Lukyanov said, speculating that security forces dominated by Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect would not let him depart and leave them to face revenge. “If he stays, he will be killed by his opponents. He is in a trap. It is not about Russia or anybody else. It is about his physical survival.”

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell in London, Sebnem Arsu in Istanbul, Peter Baker in Washington, Hwaida Saad, Neil MacFarquhar and Hania Mourtada in Beirut, and Christine Hauser in New York.

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Chiefs had given counseling to Belcher, girlfriend

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Chiefs officials knew that linebacker Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend were having relationship problems, and the team provided the couple with counseling in an effort to help, a police official said.

Belcher fatally shot Kasandra Perkins, 22, at their Kansas City home Saturday before shooting himself in the head in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in front of team officials who were trying to stop him, including general manager Scott Pioli and head coach Romeo Crennel.

Police Sgt. Richard Sharp told The Kansas City Star for a Tuesday story (http://bit.ly/SDwg9m ) that the couple had been arguing over relationship and financial issues for months and that the team had been "bending over backward" trying to help them. Sharp didn't specify how long the couple had been undergoing counseling.

When Belcher arrived at Arrowhead on Saturday, he encountered Pioli in the parking lot and told him the assistance the team had offered hadn't fixed the couple's problems and now "it was too late," Sharp said.

Pioli tried to persuade Belcher to put down his gun as Crennel and linebackers coach Gary Gibbs arrived at the scene.

Belcher thanked the men for everything the team had done for him and asked if Pioli and team owner Clark Hunt would take care of his daughter, The Star reported.

After that, Belcher reportedly said, "Guys, I have to do this."

"I was trying to get him to understand that life is not over," Crennel said Monday. "He still has a chance and let's get this worked out."

When Belcher heard police sirens approaching, he knelt behind a vehicle and shot himself in the head.

Investigators believe Belcher killed himself because he was distraught over shooting Perkins, Sharp said.

"He cared about her," Sharp said. "I don't think he could live with himself."

The night before the killings, Perkins had attended a concert downtown with friends and Belcher had been out at the Power and Light District, police said, while Belcher's mother was watching their 3-month-old baby. Detectives don't know exactly what the couple was arguing about but The Star reported that Belcher was upset that Perkins had stayed out so late.

Autopsies with toxicology tests were performed on both bodies but it could be weeks before results are known, police said.

Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Monday that Belcher's mother was given temporary custody of the couple's daughter.

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National Briefing | New England: New Hampshire: Not Guilty Plea in Hepatitis Case

A traveling hospital technologist accused of stealing drugs and infecting patients with hepatitis C through contaminated syringes pleaded not guilty in federal court on Monday. The technologist, David Kwiatkowski, whom prosecutors described as a “serial infector,” was indicted last week on charges of tampering with a consumer product and illegally obtaining drugs. Until May, Mr. Kwiatkowski worked as a cardiac technologist at Exeter Hospital, where 32 patients were given diagnoses of the same strain of hepatitis C he carries. Before that, he worked in 18 hospitals in seven states, moving from job to job despite having been fired twice over accusations of drug use and theft. In addition to the New Hampshire patients, a handful of patients in Kansas and one in Maryland have been found to carry the strain Mr. Kwiatkowski carries.

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Generic Drug Makers Facing Squeeze on Revenue

They call it the patent cliff.

Brand-name drug makers have feared it for years. And now the makers of generic drugs fear it, too.

This year, more than 40 brand-name drugs — valued at $35 billion in annual sales — lost their patent protection, meaning that generic companies were permitted to make their own lower-priced versions of well-known drugs like Plavix, Lexapro and Seroquel — and share in the profits that had exclusively belonged to the brands.

Next year, the value of drugs scheduled to lose their patents and be sold as generics is expected to decline by more than half, to about $17 billion, according to an analysis by Crédit Agricole Securities.“The patent cliff is over,” said Kim Vukhac, an analyst for Crédit Agricole. “That’s great for large pharma, but that also means the opportunities theoretically have dried up for generics.”

In response, many generic drug makers are scrambling to redefine themselves, whether by specializing in hard-to-make drugs, selling branded products or making large acquisitions. The large generics company Watson acquired a European competitor, Actavis, in October, vaulting it from the fifth- to the third-largest generic drug maker worldwide.

“They are certainly saying either I need to get bigger, or I need to get ‘specialer,’ ” said Michael Kleinrock, director of research development at the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, a health industry research group. “They all want to be special.”

As one consequence of the approaching cliff, executives for generic drug companies say, they will no longer be able to rely as much on the lucrative six-month exclusivity periods that follow the patent expirations of many drugs. During those periods, companies that are the first to file an application with the Food and Drug Administration, successfully challenge a patent and show they can make the drug win the right to sell their version exclusively or with limited competition.

The exclusivity windows can give a quick jolt to companies. During the first nine months of 2012, sales of generic drugs increased by 19 percent over the same period in 2011, to $39.1 billion from $32.8 billion, according to Michael Faerm, an analyst for Credit Suisse. Sales of branded drugs, by contrast, fell 4 percent during the same period, to $174.2 billion from $181.3 billion.

But those exclusive periods also make generic drug makers vulnerable to the fickle cycle of patent expiration. “The only issue is it’s a bubble, too,” said Mr. Kleinrock. He said next year, the generic industry would enter a drought that was expected to last about two years.  Of the drugs that are becoming generic, fewer have exclusivity periods dedicated to a single drug maker.

In 2013, for example, the antidepressant Cymbalta, sold by Eli Lilly, is scheduled to be available in generic form. But more than five companies are expected to share in sales during the first six months, according to a report by Ms. Vukhac.

Heather Bresch, the chief executive of Mylan, the second-largest generics company in the United States, said Wall Street analysts were obsessed with the issue. “I can’t go anywhere without being asked about the patent cliff, the patent cliff, the patent cliff,” she said. “The patent cliff is one aspect of a complex, multilayered landscape, and I think each company is going to face it differently.”

Jeremy M. Levin, the chief executive of Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest global maker of generic drugs, agreed. “The concept of exclusivity — where only one generic player could actually make money out of the unique moment — has diminished,” he said. “In the absence of that, many companies have had to really ask the question, ‘How do I really play in the generics world?’ ”

For Teva, Mr. Levin said, he believes the answer will be both its reach  — it sells 1,400 products, and one in six generic prescriptions in the United States is filled with a Teva product  — and what he says is a reputation for making quality products. That focus will be increasingly important, he said, given recent statements by the F.D.A. that it intends to take a closer look at the quality of generic drugs. Mr. Levin also said he planned to cut costs, announcing last week that he intended to trim from $1.5 to $2 billion in expenses over the next five years.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the country in which the pharmaceutical company Endo is based. It is an American company, not Japanese.

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Syria Moves Its Chemical Weapons and Gets Another Warning

WASHINGTON — The Syrian military’s movement of chemical weapons in recent days has prompted the United States and several allies to repeat their warning to President Bashar al-Assad that he would be “held accountable” if his forces used the weapons against the rebels fighting his government.

The warnings, which one European official said were “deliberately vague to keep Assad guessing,” were conveyed through Russia and other intermediaries.

What exactly the Syrian forces intend to do with the weapons remains murky, according to officials who have seen the intelligence from Syria. One American official provided the most specific description yet of what has been detected, saying that “the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation,” which goes beyond the mere movement of stockpiles among Syria’s several dozen known sites. But the official declined to offer more specifics of what those preparations entailed.

Over the weekend, the activity in Syria prompted a series of emergency communications among the Western allies, who have long been developing contingency plans in case they decided to intervene in an effort to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require upward of 75,000 troops. But there were no signs that preparations for any such effort were about to begin.

So far, President Obama has been very cautious about intervening in Syria, declining to arm the opposition groups directly, or even to formally recognize a newly formed coalition of opposition forces that the United States helped create.

But at a news conference in August, Mr. Obama told reporters that any evidence that Mr. Assad was moving the weapons in a threatening way or making use of them is “a red line for us” that could prompt direct American intervention. “That would change my calculus,” he added. “That would change my equation.”

American officials would not say over the weekend whether the activity they were now seeing edged toward the limit set by Mr. Obama. “These are desperate times for Assad, and this may simply be another sign of desperation,” one senior American diplomat, who has been deeply involved in the effort to try to dissuade Mr. Assad’s forces from using the chemical weapons, said Sunday.

A senior Israeli official said the movement of the chemical weapons, and the apparent preparations to use them, could be a bluff, intended as a warning to the West at a moment when NATO and the United States were debating greater support to opposition groups.

“It’s very hard to read Assad,” one senior Israeli official said. “But we are seeing a kind of action that we’ve never seen before,” he said, declining to elaborate.

The White House refused to comment on the intelligence reports, which have been shared with senior members of Congress. But a senior administration official, asked about the concerns, issued a new warning to the Syrians.

“The president has made it clear that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a red line for the United States,” the official said. “We consistently monitor developments related to Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, and are in regular contact with international partners who share our concern.

“The Assad regime must know that the world is watching, and that they will be held accountable by the United States and the international community if they use chemical weapons or fail to meet their obligations to secure them.”

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, declined to comment on the new intelligence reports but said in a statement late Sunday: “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world."

Several months ago, the United States military quietly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there to, among other things, prepare for the possibility that Syria would lose control of its chemical weapons. Turkey has asked NATO for two batteries of the Patriot antimissile system, in part as protection against Syrian missiles that might come into Turkish territory. In making their case, the Turks have raised the possibilities that chemical weapons could be used in the warheads.

This is not the first time activity at stockpile sites has been detected. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Sept. 28 that there had been “some movement” of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles to put them in more secure locations. “While there’s been some limited movement, again, the major sites still remain in place, still remain secure,” he said at the time.

But the new activity appears to be of a different nature, and officials are no longer willing to say that all the sites remain secure. “We’re worried about what the military is doing,” one official said, “but we’re also worried about some of the opposition groups,” including some linked to Hezbollah, which has set up camps near some of the chemical weapons depots.

Since the crisis began in Syria and concern has been focused on the country’s vast stockpile, the United States and its allies have increased electronic eavesdropping and other surveillance activities of the sites. A senior defense official said that no United States troops had been put on heightened alert in response to the activity, although the Pentagon was prepared to do so, if necessary.

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Nokia debunks rumor that it may be considering shift to Android

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Blockbuster BCS main event, with iffy undercard

NEW YORK (AP) — The penultimate Bowl Championship Series gave college football a national championship matchup low on controversy and loaded with star power.

No. 1 Notre Dame against No. 2 Alabama in Miami on Jan. 7 for the national title. No complaints.

That Fiesta Bowl with No. 5 Oregon against No. 7 Kansas State looks good, too.

After that, well, you can see why so many fans are so eager to get rid of the BCS.

No. 4 Florida goes to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans to face No. 22 Louisville, a Big East team that was unranked as recently as last week.

Then again, at least the Cardinals are ranked. Big Ten champion Wisconsin will be the first five-loss team to play in the Rose Bowl when it faces No. 8 Stanford in Pasadena, Calif.

Then there's the Orange Bowl in Miami, where No. 13 Florida State will face No. 16 Northern Illinois, the Mid-American Conference champion that took advantage of the lackluster Big Ten and Big East champions to slip into the BCS with a 12-1 record.

"It's a great story," Orange CEO Eric Poms said Sunday night, trying to put the best spin possible on a matchup that looks like a potential mismatch. "I think we'll be just fine."

Meanwhile, here's a list of teams that won't be playing in the BCS

— No. 3 Ohio State. The Buckeyes' postseason ban helped put the Badgers in the Rose Bowl.

— No. 6 Georgia, No. 9 LSU, No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 11 South Carolina couldn't get in because of the rule that permits no more than two teams from one conference.

— No. 12 Oklahoma was all but a lock for the Sugar Bowl, before NIU took the backdoor to being a BCS buster.

"We're 12-1," Northern Illinois quarterback Jordan Lynch told ESPN. "We faced tons of adversity this year. We won tons of games. ... We definitely deserve to be in there."

Maybe the Huskies can become this year's Boise State and shock the Seminoles. The fear is the team that lost to Iowa and barely beat Kansas will be more like the Hawaii version of BCS buster — a 41-10 loss to Georgia in the 2008 Sugar Bowl — than the Utah-kind. The Utes beat Alabama 31-17 in the '09 Sugar Bowl.

If the undercard doesn't look like much, the main event has the making of a potential blockbuster.

"The tradition of Alabama and Notre Dame brings special attention to it, but we're just trying to be the best team on Monday, Jan. 7," Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said Sunday night. "All of that tradition, what's happened in the past, is not going to help us Jan. 7, but we do respect the traditions."

The Irish clinched their spot a week ago in Los Angeles by completing a perfect regular season against rival Southern California.

Alabama earned its spot Saturday, beating Georgia 32-28 in a thrilling Southeastern Conference title game.

The program that coach Paul Bryant turned into an SEC behemoth in the 1960s and '70s, winning five national championships and sharing another during his tenure, is again dominating college football with a modern-day version of the Bear leading the way in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Coach Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide are on the verge of one of the great runs in history. Alabama would become the first team to repeat as champs since the BCS was implemented in 1998, and it would be the 11th time a team has won consecutive AP titles since the poll started in 1936. Alabama is already one of seven programs to repeat. The Tide has done it twice. Notre Dame is another.

Alabama also won the 2009 BCS championship under Saban. The last team to win three major national titles in four seasons was Nebraska, which went back-to-back in 1994 and '95 and finished No. 1 in the final coaches' poll in 1997.

In a world full of spread-the-field, hurry-up offenses, Alabama is a bastion of traditional football.

The Tide put its no-frills muscle on display Saturday, mashing Georgia with 350 yards rushing, behind tailbacks Eddie lacy and T.J. Yeldon.

The Tide has been more potent offensively this season than last to make up for a defense that has slipped, but only a bit. Alabama leads the nation in total defense (246 yards per game) and is second in points allowed (10.7 per game).

When Kelly was hired at Notre Dame three years ago, he looked at Alabama and the SEC, which has won six straight BCS titles, and decided the Irish needed to play like that.

Kelly built his reputation and winning teams at previous stops on fast-paced spread offenses. In South Bend, Ind., he has put the fight back in the Irish, who have won eight AP national titles — only Alabama has as many — but none since 1988.

Notre Dame has allowed the fewest touchdowns in the country (10) and is sixth overall in total defense (286 yards per game).

"It's clear that the formation of any great program is going to be on its defense," Kelly said. "If you play great defense you've got a chance. For us to move Notre Dame back into national prominence we had to develop a defense."

The face of the Irish isn't a strong-armed quarterback or speedy ball carrier. It's middle linebacker Manti Te'o, a 255-pound offense wrecker with a nose for the ball. The senior has seven interceptions and is a likely Heisman finalist.

Te'o, 300-pound linemen Stephon Tuitt and Louis Nix have formed a red-zone wall for the Irish. Late goal-line stands highlighted victories against Stanford and USC.

"This is just a good all-around football team with tremendous balance on offense and a very physical defense," Saban said.

In two years, college football switches to a four-team playoff to determine its champion, and a new way of filling the other marquee bowls. It probably won't cure everything that ails the postseason, but it's safe to say many won't miss the BCS.

___

Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap

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