Congratulations to the LSU Tigers on their 38-24 upset of the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, and on winning the coveted BCS trophy. I'm going to try to avoid some controversy by staying away from the "National Championship" label. (O.K. I know that will ruffle some feathers in Baton Rouge, but c'mon!)
The whole "National Championship" brouhaha was cooked up by the creation of The Associated Press Poll in 1934 -- a public-relations master stroke that used our neurotic national obsession with crowning a winner to sell A LOT of papers. It was obviously a beauty contest, and only the winners paid much attention to it, but college football wasn't the multi-million dollar business it is today.
The genius of the BCS system is that it preserves all the long-standing arrangements between the various bowl organizations, NCAA conferences, the AP, the upstart USA Today Coaches Poll, and so on -- while neatly carving out a piece of the College Football Pie for themselves. The claim of being a "National Championship" reminds me of Bimarck's comment on sausages and the law, though. The BCS own website links to an article from the Kansas City Star: The BCS Works, which (unfortunately) has Missouri and West Virginia in the final game.
None of this is meant to take anything away from LSU, or Ohio State either, for that matter. The BCS bowl was a fine game between two great teams that had nothing to do with creating the BCS formula that landed them in the match. It's just that in this year of college football "upsets," (Vegas generally had a good year picking winners) there are a lot of teams who feel slighted, and some of them have pretty good cases.
USA Today / Coaches Poll final standings
- LSU
- USC
- Georgia
- Ohio State
- Missouri
- West Virginia
- Kansas
- Oklahoma
- Virginia Tech
- Texas
- Boston College
- Tennessee
- Arizona State
- Auburn
- Brigham Young
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Michigan
- Cincinnati
- Wisconsin
- Clemson
- Texas Tech
- Oregon
- Penn State
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