Everything about that article is wrong.
First of all, reporters ASKED Mack Brown about bowl selections, and he said, "This team deserves to be in the BCS." I'm pretty sure that's what he said verbatim. That's hardly "begging and pleading." That prompted a response from Aaron Rodgers about how "we're too classy to say anything like that."
More than that, Texas went DOWN in the rankings after Mack made that statement.
The NEXT week, Cal played a make-up game (early non-con game cancelled because of hurricane threat) with Southern Miss, who was a sub-.500 team, and that game went deep into the 4th quarter before Cal won it. **THEN** Cal lost some points in the polls, allowing Texas to take the Rose Bowl spot in the BCS formula.
Recall also that the PAC champion was USC, and they skipped the Rose Bowl to play in the national championship, and for a while, it looked like Cal was going to get that spot, and the media was WILD about perennial loser Cal getting a spot in the Rose Bowl. And then not only did that get lost, but the spot was taken by a Texas team that nobody outside this state roots for.
That SI article is bullshit.