NORMAN — What to do about USC? Well, something, anyway.
Only that’s more than the NCAA and the BCS are likely willing to do.
In a very indirect way, it came up at Big 12 media days during Bill Hancock’s question-and-answer session following his presentation on the sanctity of the BCS.
Hancock is the executive director of the BCS and his presentation was convincing, yet bothersome because the thing about the BCS is it was never supposed to be the best way to crown a national champion, only the best available method, given what’s really sacred about college football: the bowl games. If only the BCS would admit what it isn’t, it would be so much easier to take.
But I digress.
During the Q and A, Hancock said this:
“If USC loses the appeal, the championship will be vacated. And the feeling here is in our group, the commissioners group, is that there was not a game, no game happened.”
To be fair to Hancock, he went on to say that he presumed the college presidents would go along with the NCAA’s guideline in vacating, but that it was not yet a fact.
Yet, consider the irony of the moment.
The man, Hancock, employed to sell the BCS, a system by which four bowl games are separated above the rest and another, the BCS championship game, is elevated above the four, for the precise reason of declaring a national champion, said the ultimate stripping of USC’s 2004 national championship would make it as though no game had been played.
But how can that be when the BCS was created for that game?
Wouldn’t that make it as though a season had not been played?
That game, of course, was the 2005 Orange Bowl. USC beat Oklahoma 55-19. Also that season, Auburn went undefeated. So did Utah.
Tommy Tuberville was Auburn’s coach. Now the first-year Texas Tech coach, he had something to say at Big 12 media days.
“Why in the world would you not give it to anybody, whether it’s Oklahoma or (Auburn) or Utah?” Tuberville said. “Everybody played that year.
“Why would you not give it to somebody? We had a heck of a football team that year. There is no reason to keep a group of players (from saying), ‘Hey, I was a national champion.’ I’m not saying it was us, but somebody.”
Tuberville had an easy remedy.
Vote again.
There is a catch.
The Associated Press also awards the national championship and has no direct ties with the NCAA. Even if the BCS no longer recognizes USC as the 2004 champ, the AP still would barring some sort of announcement
Who on earth speaks for the AP poll is another good question, because AP voters don’t work for the AP. And if the AP did something about the 2004 title, what about the 2003 title, also won by USC, despite its not appearing at the BCS title game, which that year was the Sugar Bowl, where OU lost to LSU.
Yet all of that aside, Tuberville is right. He’s right when he says everybody played and somebody deserves to win it. It’s too late to play another game, but it’s not to late to vote again.
It could be OU because OU earned its place in the title game, while USC did not. It could be Auburn because Auburn should have been in that game with OU. Utah doesn’t really have a claim, but unbeaten is still unbeaten.
That’s another issue.
This issue is all about how an entity created to produce a national championship game can come out later and say, well, really, no game was played.
The NCAA may have precedent on its side.
Remember when Victoria Principal’s “Dallas” character, Pam, dreamed up the entire seventh season of “Dallas” so Patrick Duffy, Bobby, could return to the show?
The season never happened.
See?
No problem.
Clay Horning 366-3526 cfhorning@normantranscript.com
