The final word came at 3:33 p.m. CST. The Big 12 South Division representative in the Dr Pepper Football Championship game Saturday will be ...

Oklahoma.

The Sooners won the tiebreaker thanks to Sunday's announcement of this week's Bowl Championship Series standings. Oklahoma edged Texas .9351 to .9223. That's a difference of 0.0128 of a point. The Sooners, the Longhorns and the Red Raiders finished in a three-way South Division tie with 7-1 records.

According to Big 12 tiebreaker rules, the BCS standings became the next-to-last resort to resolving the deadlock.

“I would like to congratulate Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech for winning a share of the Big 12 South Division,” Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe said in a statement. “This has truly been a memorable season thus far for the Big 12, including the first three-way, first-place tie in the Conference’s 13-year history.

"The tiebreak process currently in place was carefully considered and voted upon by our athletics directors years ago, although I doubt they envisioned the scenario we have this year with a tie including the No. 2 and 3 teams in the country in one of our divisions."

Texas was No. 2 in last week's BCS standings but the Sooners gained enough in the six computer rankings to move past the Longhorns, who dropped to No. 3 ahead of Florida.

Oklahoma, which is No. 2 behind Alabama in the BCS standings, will face Missouri in Saturday's championship game. That will be a rematch of last year's championship game played in San Antonio.

The voters in the USA Today/Coaches and Harris poll appeared to side with Texas' argument that in a two-team decision between the Longhorns and the Sooners, Texas' 45-35 victory over OU should count.

Texas went from a 53-point deficit to a 5-point lead in the human polls.

"Basically, that's a tie in the polls," Jerry Palm, administrator of collegebcs.com said. "When the humans can't make a decision, the computers usually step in and decide."

Texas coach Mack Brown has advocated that the Big 12 adopt the Southeastern Conference tie-breaker that uses BCS standings to eliminate the lowest-ranked team in a three-way tie, then uses head-to-head to break the tie between the remaining two teams. In that tie-breaker application, Texas would have had the tie-breaker over Oklahoma.

"The use of the BCS standings is one of multiple steps used and occurs when other steps in the process are unable to break the tie," Beebe said. "As part of our season review, other tiebreak options will be assessed, and presented for consideration.”

A week ago, Texas was ranked No. 1 in two of the six computer rankings, No. 2 in two and No. 3 in the other two. This week, the Longhorns were first in one, second in two, third in two and fourth in one.

Oklahoma this week moved up to first in three of the computer rankings - Massey, Sagarin and Wolfe. Those last two computer formulas figure in home and road victories so the Sooners' victory at Oklahoma State, ranked No. 12 going into the game, gave OU a boost in those two computer rankings.

Saturday's Big 12 and Southeastern Conference championship games figure to produce the two teams that will meet for the national championship on Jan. 8 in South Florida.

No. 1 Alabama will face No. 4 Florida in the SEC title game in Atlanta. The winner of that game figures to finish in the top two of the final BCS standings.

If Oklahoma beats Missouri, the Sooners also should remain in the top two. If the Tigers pull an upset, then Texas could wind up in the BCS championship game facing the SEC champion.

The BCS standings are computed using a formula made up of votes in the USA Today/Coaches and Harris Interactive polls and six computer rankings. Each counts for one-third of the formula. The highest and lowest computer rankings for each team are discarded before the final standings are figured.

The BCS breakdown
Here's how the components of the Bowl Championship Series standings for Oklahoma and Texas stacked up last week and this week: