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OXFORD, Miss. — There was still 5 minutes to go in the first quarter Saturday night, and the scoreboard said, LSU 21, Ole Miss 0.

That's a projection of 84-0 if you are an Ole Miss fan.

"Can't there be some kind of mercy rule? They do that in baseball," a Vaught-Hemingway stadium pressbox employee said, and she had the right idea. It was LSU 35, Ole Miss 3 at the half, 49-3 after three and 52-3 when it was mercifully and finally over.

No, Virginia there is no mercy rule in college football, perhaps only because the Bowl Champioship Series gods have not thought of that yet. But a version of one could come into play Friday when No. 1 LSU (11-0, 7-0 SEC) goes for perfection in the regular season finale against BCS No. 6 Arkansas (10-1, 6-1 SEC) in Tiger Stadium at 1:30 p.m. on CBS.

Call it the SEC/BCS point shaving rule. Pay attention, this gets a little confusing like most things BCS oriented. It is not likely. LSU should be able to handle a very good Arkansas team. But the following scenario could happen.

Should Arkansas upset LSU on Friday and BCS No. 3 Alabama defeats Auburn on Saturday, there will be a three-way tie for first in the SEC West among LSU, Arkansas and Alabama at 7-1. And for the first time in SEC history, the SEC Championship Game in Atlanta will not be set at the conclusion of the regular season. Everyone will have to wait until the BCS standings come out the next day on Nov. 27 to learn what West team will meet SEC East champion Georgia on Dec. 3 because the first six prongs of the SEC tiebreaker will not solve the West tie.

The first six tiebreakers basically would be canceled out because LSU's only loss would be to Arkansas, Arkansas' only loss would be to Alabama (38-14 on Sept. 24 in Tuscaloosa, Ala.) and Alabama's only loss would be to LSU (9-6 in overtime on Nov. 5 in Tuscaloosa.)

The seventh tiebreaker involves BCS rankings.

"The tied team with the highest ranking in the BCS standings following the last weekend of regular-season games shall be the divisional representative in the SEC Championship Game, unless the second of the tied teams is ranked within five-or-fewer places of that highest ranked team," the SEC's tiebreaker says. "In this case, the head-to-head results of the top two ranked tied teams shall determine the representative."

That latter scenario is likely to be the "case" as the SEC West is currently 1-3-6 in the BCS with LSU, Alabama and Arkansas, respectively.

OK, now for Arkansas to get to Atlanta, it likely has to finish higher than LSU, and it has to have LSU finish higher than Alabama. This is because if Arkansas and Alabama finish as the top West teams in the BCS, Alabama wins that tiebreaker because of its head-to-head win over the Razorbacks.

So what Arkansas must do is beat LSU, but not beat LSU by so many points as to drop the Tigers below Alabama in the BCS. Hence, the above use of the term, "point shaving."

Imagine if Arkansas is up 27-13 on LSU with less than a minute to play. The BCS-wise thing for Arkansas to do would be to have its defensive players sit down after an LSU offensive snap to let the Tigers score for a closer final score.

"The larger the margin of victory for the Hogs over LSU, the more likely that LSU will drop behind Alabama, which would give the Tide the tiebreaker win," BCS expert Brad Edwards of ESPN said in an email Saturday night.

The best scenario for Arkansas is to win by three points or fewer by this logic. The Razorbacks can actually hurt themselves by playing better than that and blowing out LSU. What has college football come to?

"Arkansas should go into the weekend ranked No. 5 in the BCS, with LSU No. 1 and Alabama No. 2," Edwards said, weighing BCS No. 2 Oklahoma State's upset loss to Iowa State on Friday night.

"You'd think that Arkansas would have to look really impressive to jump over Oklahoma (No. 5 in the BCS as of now) and Oregon (No. 4 in the BCS) and into the top two," Edwards said. "But that's not the case. It seems like the only realistic shot Arkansas would have would be a narrow win over LSU combined with Alabama having a narrow win over Auburn."

Thank you BCS. Or should we thank the SEC?

"Keep in mind that this isn't the BCS's doing," Edwards said. "The SEC chose to use the BCS standings as part of its tiebreaker, even though the BCS wasn't created for that purpose."

Other conferences have used the BCS in the same fashion, though, and non-BCS conference schools' BCS bowl eligibility depends on their BCS rankings.

What a mess!

College football is not fixed. But for the BCS to work at its best consistently, it needs to fix games every now and then, or at least shave 'em.

Arkansas shaving points against No. 1 LSU to help its BCS ranking would not be against NCAA rules, but it would be fundamentally wrong and in a nutshell exemplifies everything that is wrong with the BCS system.

"All right guys, let's go out and beat the No. 1 team in the nation," Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino may tell his team before Friday's game. "But not by too much."