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Yup, LSU won it 2 years ago.
It's the BCS, stupid!
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
December 22, 2005
The surest bet of college football's annual overload of wild and woolly bowl action is simple, Southern California will not capture a third consecutive national championship, no matter what everyone keeps saying.
Oh, the Trojans may defeat Texas in January's Rose Bowl, host site for this season's Bowl Championship Series le game, but only hype or revisionist history says it would mean a three-peat for SC.
A second le? Sure. Pete Carroll's team whipped Oklahoma last year in the le game to win it all. Do it again and you get back-to-back.
But that certainly isn't three, because the year before it was LSU coach Nick Saban (not Carroll) who hoisted that ugly glass football that goes to the "champion" of the national system that each Division I-A football program (USC included) agrees each season to play under.
Why everyone is saying otherwise is beyond me.
Regular readers know that you can't oppose or detest the BCS more than I do. They also know that in December of 2003 we called Oklahoma's selection over USC into the le game against LSU "a fraud."
But our sympathy to SC's plight back then doesn't change the basic reality of sports, namely that the rules are the rules are the rules. In 2003, just as last year and this one, USC and its representatives of the Pacific 10 Conference, agreed that the system of determining the national champion of college football was the BCS.
That's how all sports work. Before the start of the season, everyone gets together and determines how to crown a champion. Some leagues, such as the NBA or NHL, have a series of playoff series. Some, such as the NFL, have a single elimination tournament. Some, such as NCAA hoops, have bigger fields. Some, such as major league baseball, have smaller ones.
College football's is the most controversial because it is the most ridiculous, designed to protect long standing power and profit in six major conferences (including the Pac 10) rather than equitably determining a champion. Fans hate it. Players hate it. Most coaches hate it.
None of which matters. The powers-that-be who count the money love it, or at least love it enough to agree to it every year. And back in 2003, once Pac 10 Commissioner Tom Hansen, on behalf of USC, did that, the Trojans had to live with the result.
That meant a complicated formula weighing computer stats and human polls determined that LSU and Oklahoma got to play in the championship game even though they, like, USC, had suffered a loss. Most people thought USC was better than OU, but the system factored more than what most people thought. The computers liked OU and once that happened, USC had no claim, ever, to the 2003 national championship.
Yes, the Trojans wound up being crowned champs by the Associated Press pollsters, which is fine and dandy, but that has no official bearing on anything. Before the 1997 creation of the BCS, the AP was about all anyone had, so it is understandable why teams cited its results. But post-'97 it is meaningless.
The agreed upon system was and is the BCS, not the BCS or a popularity contest if it turns out a certain team doesn't like the BCS. You can't rewrite the rules after the fact just because it benefits you.
Now, we understand why the Trojans would lay claim to the 2003 le. The BCS is so pathetic, untrustworthy and impossibly bad, it is human nature to just selectively ignore it. But intellectually it doesn't work that way. The official 2003 champion was LSU.
Why the media says (and will say it a million times in the next two weeks) USC won it all that year is baffling because it certainly isn't factual. I guess if everyone repeats the lie long enough, they no longer think they are lying. Who knows?
It is not like the silly formula hasn't assisted SC through the years. While it is my opinion the BCS screwed them back in 2003, it's also my opinion that it helped them last year. It was then that the formula decided that USC and Oklahoma should play for the le while three other undefeated teams sat out, Utah, Boise State and, most formidably, Auburn.
USC pounded an OU team that was the puffed up product of a weak Big Twelve Conference. It wasn't the Trojans fault, but the reality is they got a cupcake championship game. Considering what Auburn's two great running backs (Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams) are currently doing to NFL defenses, is there any doubt the Tigers would have been a much more formidable opponent?
That's the thing with the BCS, some years it helps, some years it hurts. Given the chance, maybe USC would have won it all in 2003. But maybe Auburn would have won it in 2004. We'll never know.
As long as we have the system we have, we can only go with the facts, no matter what the newspapers and television analysts say. In this case, USC and their 34-game and two-Heisman win streak are gunning for their second consecutive national le.
Win the Rose Bowl and next season they can go for the three-peat.
Yup, LSU won it 2 years ago.
Last time I checked the AP could name a national champion that wasn't necessarily the same as the BCS champion.
Yup, USC won it 2 years ago.
It was a split le, no?
Yeah, it was a split but LSU won the real game, BCS game.
Only because the damn computers jobbed USC. Honestly, why is USC slighted? They were the #1 in both human polls afterall. AP and coaches. Considering a weaker team won the le the next year, it makes sense to me that they are worthy of their share.
I'm not slighting LSU. I'll refer to them as Champions whenever I reference them, but USC is going for a threepeat. They are one of the top-3 teams of all time. Anyone who says differently is in denial. They smoked that Oklahoma team last year. That Oklahoma team was arguably better than the one that lost the year before.
USC is two wins from being, without question, the greatest team ever. Any team, any sport. One win vs. Cal in 2003 and one win vs. Texas in 2006. Speaking hypothetically, they get both, they have three straight undefeated seasons and three National les.
I think Texas poses a unique challenge and should be a very tough beat.
If USC happens to win, they will deserve all the praise they get.
The BCS is about making money, not about compe ive integrity, so any appeal to the sole legitimacy of the champion it names rings hollow to me.
This is EXACTLY why the BCS needs a playoff. If there were a true championship game there could be no arguement as to who was the REAL champion 2 years ago. The BCS is supposed to be the official champion, so by that, USC is going for a repeat not a 3-peat. There should have been no reason for OU to play LSU 2 years ago, but they did and LSU won the National Championship.
The BCS national champion is merely the BCS champion. It is not the national champion of NCAA Division I-A football. There is no such thing and never has been.
So being the media poll national champion is just as legitimate as being the BCS champion, maybe even more so in that at least the journalists are trying to decide which is the best team, subjective and biased though they may be. The BCS is just about making money, and oh yeah, there is some football played too.
except when you play a two loss michigan team to win itSo being the media poll national champion is just as legitimate as being the BCS champion
BYU played a five-loss Michigan team to win it back in the eighties.
In the case of the BCS, "just as legitimate" is synonymous with "also basically complete bull ."
This year, there is a viable le matchup in spite of the system.
Quit being such a Horry4Three, the BCS isn't a true le game anyway, just a money making extravaganza.Yeah, it was a split but LSU won the real game, BCS game.
USC is certainly going for the 3 peat. They would have whipped LSU 2 years ago.
hey, all, i agree that bcs is a crock of moneymaking bull , but everyone knows this deep down inside...can you just not say it and let us keep living the fantasy...
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