USC - Rose Garden
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USC versus UCLA
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USC - Tommy Trojan
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USC - Marshall Business School
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USC Finishes the 2003 Regular Season Number 1 in AP and CNN/ESPN But Does Not Play In BCS Championship Game
One of the reasons the BCS system was put in place was to avoid split championships
so it was ironic when the system put the number 2 ranked team in both polls
against the number 3 ranked team in both polls, leaving USC out of the mix.
One fact that made the situation completely unacceptable was the fact
that USC's only loss was in triple overtime on the road yet LSU and Oklahoma
were both defeated soundly in their losses.
NCAA Men's Basketball does not have these issues because of the March Madness
Playoff Tournament. Football should be the same way, championships
should be decided on the field by the players, not by computers.
One of the arguments against a playoff system is that it would extend the
season such that the players would play too many games and miss out on school.
This argument is weak. In 2003 Kansas State played 14 games before
their bowl game. Other top 25 schools played 12 to 13 games before
their bowl game. Why not shorten the regular season back to 11 games
and have the top 8 teams in the nation square off in a national playoff system?
This would only add 3 games to the 11 regular season games.
The answer is simple, this is not about the students playing too many
games and extending the season. This is about money.
The bowls fear they will lose a great deal of money if we move to
a nation-wide playoff system. In the mean time we are left
with a system that has the potential for disaster every year.
The December 8, 2003 Los Angeles Times
had an intersting article by AP Football Write, Josh Dubow
that summed some of these points up.
The article entitled,
A Bittersweet Twist
started as follows:
"College football fans, get ready to crown not just one, but possibly two national champions.
And get ready for a new round of controversy.
That's because the computer rankings had Oklahoma as the country's top team Sunday
while the human poll voters picked Southern California.
It's exactly what the Bowl Championship Series was designed to avoid,
with the prospect of a split title certain to renew cries for a playoff.
Despite getting walloped by Kansas State 35-7 on Saturday night,
Oklahoma will take its 12-1 record to the Sugar Bowl against LSU,
which won the Southeastern Conference championship by beating Georgia 34-13.
The winner in New Orleans on Jan. 4 automatically captures the coaches' title under BCS format.
USC, which finished third in the BCS rankings,
could win The Associated Press championship by beating No. 4 Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
'We're the No. 1 team in the country and we'll do everything we can to hold that spot,'
USC coach Pete Carroll said. 'If we win that football game, we feel like
we'll be the No. 1 team in the country regardless of what that other bowl is called.'
The No. 1 team in the AP poll has never dropped after winning its bowl game."
Los Angeles Times Staff Write Gary Klein wrote about how the news
impacted the USC players in his
News Leaves Trojans Critical of BCS
article on Dember 8th, 2003.
"Less than 24 hours after joyously celebrating a victory that propelled USC to No. 1 in the polls
for the first time in more than two decades, Trojan players sat mostly in stunned silence
Sunday afternoon in the university's athletic dining hall.
USC already knew the final bowl championship series standings before they were announced on television.
So players, coaches and administrators stared blankly at the big-screen monitors on the wall,
trying to mask the disappointment of being No. 3 behind Oklahoma and Louisiana State,
and of playing Michigan in the Rose Bowl instead of Oklahoma or Louisiana State
for the BCS title in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans."
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Diane Pucin wrote about how silly it was
to have a Hawaii-Boise State game decide who plays for the national championship
in her December 8th article entitled
USC Is Crunched by the Numbers.
"This made Hawaii's game late Saturday crucial for USC.
Because the Trojans had earlier defeated Hawaii,
a victory by Hawaii over No. 18 Boise State would have enhanced USC's schedule strength.
But at 12:17 a.m. Pacific time, Boise State won, 45-28, sealing the Trojans' fate.
USC's absence from the championship game appeared likely to increase pressure on those
who run college football to scrap the six-year-old BCS when its contract expires after the 2005 season,
or modify it as soon as next season.
'I'd relish that,' Carroll said Sunday.
'It seems so crazy that I'm watching Hawaii against Boise State at midnight and it matters to us.
I don't have all the answers but I think it's clear there are some issues.'"
Bill Plaschke wrote about the nightmare
in his
No. 1 and Done? It Does Not Compute article in the LA Times on December 8, 2003.
"They shuffled into a cafeteria across the street from the site of their rowdy Saturday victory,
silent where they had once been celebrating, stunned where they had once been certain.
Under backward baseball caps and tugged-low ski caps, behind baggy shorts and wrinkled shirts,
members of the USC football team looked up at giant TV screens with childlike confusion.
How did this happen? Where did it go?
They went to sleep on Saturday night as the No. 1 team in the America.
They woke up Sunday morning with no chance of winning the bowl championship series national title.
They went to sleep as a living, breathing, title-contending football team.
They woke up as a computer virus.
'I can't lie,' giant defensive tackle Shaun Cody said softly. 'This is really tough.'
Those university presidents who sold college football's integrity for $900 million and the BCS,
they should have heard that voice.
'It's not right,' receiver Mike Williams said, wincing. 'It's just not right.'
Those fools who program computers that determine a team's worth without understanding a team's heart,
they should have seen that face.
In the end, the BCS snub that left USC, the top-ranked team in the Associated Press and coaches' polls,
out of the national championship Sugar Bowl is not about schedules or scores, but humans.
It's about lessons that universities have been entrusted to teach them.
It's about how the BCS represents an enormous failure of that mission."
One of the most interesting articles about the situation was written by
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, Chris Dufresne. Specifically, his
Closer Inspection Reveals Reality Bytes for Trojans
article discusses just how close it was between USC and LSU for the right to play Oklahoma.
He even talks about how the Peter Wolfe computer run by Wolfe,
an associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and a confessed Bruin fan,
could have boosted USC to the Oklahoma game had USC remained No. 2 in his rankings after December 6th.
"We know top-ranked USC lost a shot at playing in the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl because it finished 0.16 behind Louisiana State in Sunday's final bowl championship series standings.
Close, right?
Actually, it was closer than anyone could have imagined.
So close it took an astronomer to explain it.
A review of final BCS calculations reveals that had the order been flipped in only one of the four BCS computers that had LSU ranked No. 2 ahead of No. 3 USC, the Trojans would have advanced to the Sugar Bowl and LSU fans would have been crying foul.
And get this: Had that one computer placed USC ahead of LSU, the Trojans would have nipped the Tigers by the margin of 0.01.
And you wonder why the controversy rages?
...
LSU finished second at 5.99, and USC was third at 6.15.
The schools with the two lowest scores in the final BCS standings advance to the BCS title game, which left USC out despite finishing No. 1 in both human polls.
USC and LSU basically finished in a dead heat in a race that was decided by decimal points.
The Trojans led the Tigers in four of the seven computers last week, but LSU's weekend win over No. 5 Georgia allowed for an almost complete turnaround.
Still, had USC earned a No. 2 rating instead of No. 3 in either the Seattle Times, Wes Colley, Peter Wolfe or Richard Billingsley systems, the Trojans' BCS computer average would have dropped from 2.67 to 2.50, giving them at least the 0.17 they needed to pass LSU and finish at 5.98.
How close did USC come to overtaking LSU in any of those computers?
The margin in the Colley Matrix borders on mind-boggling.
Here is his order of finish:
1. Oklahoma, 0.91723
2. LSU, 0.88160
3. USC, 0.87636
'It was razor thin, any way you look at it,' Colley said Monday.
Colley has a doctorate in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University and is a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Virginia.
For what it's worth, Wes' brother, Will, played football in the Southeastern Conference ... for Georgia.
Colley rates his teams on a scale from zero to 1. He said the difference between LSU and USC came down to a factor of five-thousandths.
Asked to put this in astronomical terms, Colley said, 'If the Earth was LSU and the sun was zero, USC would be twice the distance to the moon.'
Yes, that close.
Colley said any number of results would have pushed USC ahead of LSU in his final analysis.
What if Notre Dame had defeated Syracuse?
'Let's see if that was enough to do it,' Colley said over the phone as he substituted a Notre Dame win into his computer. 'Yeah, that's enough to do it.'
Colley said the chances of making a miscalculation are remote as long as he feeds the correct scores into his formula.
Colley said he downloads his scores from Yahoo and double-checks them against scores posted on http://espn.com.
There is always the chance for human error, he said, adding, 'You've got to be vigilant.'
The Colley Matrix was the closest finish in this LSU-USC computer war, but not the only close one.
The other tallies from computers that factored into the ultimate BCS outcome:
Peter Wolfe — 1. Oklahoma, 7.175; 2. LSU, 7.032; 3. USC, 6.789.
Seattle Times — 1. Oklahoma, 0.781; 2. LSU, 0.776; 3. USC, 0.760.
Richard Billingsley — 1. Oklahoma, 309.799; 2. LSU, 300.683; 3. USC, 300.567.
Wolfe, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine and a confessed Bruin fan, could have sent USC to the Sugar Bowl had the Trojans remained No. 2 in his rankings.
But that's not how it came out in the end.
Wolfe said LSU's victory against Georgia was enough for the Tigers to pass the Trojans in his final rankings."
Number one ranked USC defeated number four ranked Michigan soundly in the Rose Bowl.
During the regular season, the Michigan QB was saced 15 times.
USC had 9 sacks in the Rose Bowl.
During the regular season Michigan allowed only 5 Touchdown Passes.
USC had 4 touchdown passes agains Michigan in the Rose Bowl.
ESPN did not waste any time in recognizing the way USC capped off their season.
Ivan Maisel, a senior writer for ESPN.com, wrote an excellent article shortly after the Rose Bowl
"PASADENA, Calif. -- In the days before the NFL merger, the teams that lost the conference championship games
used to play the following week in a game called the Playoff Bowl.
The game died because of a lack of interest.
No one is suggesting that the Sugar Bowl not be played Sunday night.
It's a nice bowl game.
The LSU and Oklahoma fans will have a lot of fun on Bourbon Street.
There are drinks to be lifted, and blouses to be lifted, and, at the end of the game, a trophy to be lifted.
But the No. 1 team in the country played in the Rose Bowl on Thursday.
USC toyed with Michigan, winning 28-14.
The Trojans will win their fourth Associated Press championship,
and anyone who believes they aren't deserving after Thursday is wearing a) purple and gold or b) crimson and cream.
...
The final score doesn't begin to describe the Trojans' dominance.
The Wolverines came in with a 10-2 record, a Big Ten Conference championship and a six-game winning streak,
but they were never in the game.
As a month-long, three-way argument about who should be No. 1 continued,
Michigan smiled and went about its business,
hoping that USC was so busy being fitted for rings that it would forget about blocking and tackling.
No such luck. If the four teams were the Marx Brothers, Michigan would be Zeppo.
And it should be said that if the Wolverines hadn't played as hard as they did,
the difference in points would have gotten wider.
The winner of the Sugar Bowl will win the coaches' poll, and there will be two national champions,
and we'll all survive.
But even Michigan coach Lloyd Carr acknowledged the ludicrous corner
that the American Football Coaches Association had painted itself into.
"I'm committed to vote the winner of the Sugar Bowl as the national champion," Carr said.
"If I was a member of the media or the press, you could certainly make a case for Southern Cal.
You could make me an honorary member."
Carr offering to be a member of the media? Michigan got hit so hard that its coach suffered a concussion.
In the days leading up to the Rose Bowl, coaches and players from both USC and Michigan
talked about how great it was to have the Granddaddy of Them All like it used to be -- two tradition-laden champions
from the Big Ten and the Pac-10.
This Rose Bowl was exactly like it used to be.
Even Bo Schembechler, the Michigan coach of a generation ago, who went 2-8 in Rose Bowls, was there.
But this time, the speed and athleticism of USC overwhelmed the strength and girth of Michigan.
...
If this had been the British Open, the silversmith would have started inscribing "USC" on the Claret Jug.
Back in the day, before televised golf, the leaders didn't tee off last.
Sometimes the champion finished well before the last twosome straggled in.
The final pairing in this event won't finish until Sunday night,
but USC is in the clubhouse, and its lead is insurmountable."
ESPN footnoted the article mentioning that Ivan Maisel is a senior writer.
The 2003 season showed that college football without a playoff system does not make sense.
The irony is that college athletes do not get paid partially because people argue
that it would be bad for the integrity of the games. However, the reason we do not
have a playoff system in college football is because of the money at stake
if we lessen the importance of bowl games.
The Orange County Register recognized the remarkable year USC had
in their Friday, January 2, 2004 copy of the paper.
In the
You can't argue: USC is No. 1 article by Blythe Bernhard, the facts are documented.
"Fans at the Rose Bowl say the convincing victory over Michigan settles the dispute.
PASADENA – Travis Biffar, a USC graduate and Newport Beach lawyer,
had good arguments Thursday for the Trojans' case for the national championship.
"We've been underrated all year," Biffar, 27,
said in his opening statement with USC leading 14-0 in the second quarter of the Rose Bowl.
"Playing a team like Michigan that has a tough schedule and dominating the way we are says a lot."
USC's football team is ranked No. 1 in the coaches' and media polls
but came in third in the year-end Bowl Championship Series computer standings that determine
the national championship game matchup.
Oklahoma and LSU will play for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Sunday.
Although LSU, Oklahoma and USC each have one loss,
Biffar said the Trojans presented sufficient evidence to prove they belonged in the title game.
"LSU played a Division II team, and Oklahoma got blown out in their last game," Biffar said.
"Clearly it should have been us in the national championship game."
Even Michigan fan Carlos Banuelos came to USC's defense after the Trojans' 28-14 victory.
"Although USC will share the championship, I still think they deserve the full championship.
I think the BCS is flawed," Banuelos said.
Banuelos, a lawyer who works with Biffar,
had hoped for a more competitive game and accused Michigan's players of incompetence in the first half,
when they went scoreless.
"I expected Michigan to run the ball more effectively," Banuelos said.
"I expected the defensive line to put more pressure on the quarterback."
Michigan's defense assured the final verdict by allowing USC's star receiver, Mike Williams,
to throw a touchdown pass to quarterback Matt Leinart to make the score 28-7.
"It's game over," Banuelos said.
The game was supposed to be a close one, Banuelos said, with his alma mater Michigan pulling it out in the end.
But USC's convincing victory proved the Trojans faithful's point that their team deserved to be playing in the title game.
"I can't imagine a national championship game without the No. 1 team in the nation,"
Fountain Valley resident Edward Halley said.
Other witnesses at the game said the Trojans overwhelmingly proved their superiority.
"We are the No. 1-ranked team, and we did win our bowl game against a quality team,"
said Yoji Kawaguchi of Irvine.
"I want us to be the consensus No. 1."
Karen Tonelli said she wished college football had a playoff system to determine a champion.
She is confident USC would beat either LSU or Oklahoma.
A shared trophy is a tarnished trophy, she said.
"Of course I think USC should have the No. 1 ranking alone.
But in reality it's going to be split," the Yorba Linda resident said.
In his closing arguments, Biffar charged the BCS championship game with irrelevance.
"The human polls put USC first," he said. "We're the people's champ."
Case closed.
The O.C. Register article continues to recognize a constant theme, the BCS is flawed.
USC demonstrated that they deserve not only a share of the national championship,
they deserve the whole thing. If playoffs were in place for the 2003 regular season,
USC would go into the tournament as the favorite ahead of both LSU and Oklahoma.
Stewart Mandel from si.com is another author who wrote about the silly BCS system.
USC deserves the championship but it is questionable whether the Oklahoma/LSU winner
deserves the other half.
If we had a playoff system in place everything would be decided on the football field.
The situation is so ridiculous that people are talking about the "human" championship
and the "computer" championship. This is stupid because humans programmed the computers.
The only way to eliminate the controversy is to move to a playoff tournament.
Here are some of the strong points from Mandel's Easy Street article.
"Trojans have little trouble stating case for national championship
Posted: Friday January 2, 2004 12:30AM; Updated: Friday January 2, 2004 12:37AM
PASADENA, Calif. -- This time, USC didn't need to put a 50 on the scoreboard to prove its dominance.
In fact, it was only the second time all season the Trojans had won a game by fewer than 20 points.
Only it didn't seem that way watching it.
It's not that Michigan didn't play like a No. 4 team in Thursday's Rose Bowl,
and it's not like the Wolverines failed to put up a fight.
But the Trojans, despite facing their toughest adversary to date,
simply did what they always do in the course of their 28-14 victory:
make football look like as effortless an endeavor as tying one's shoes.
"From the jump, we said it doesn't matter what team we play,"
animated USC defensive lineman Omar Nazel proclaimed in the aftermath of his team's split championship-clinching victory.
"As long as we go out and execute to the fullest, no one can stop us."
Unfortunately, we'll never know whether Oklahoma or LSU could have proven otherwise.
But after watching the way quarterback Matt Leinart and receivers Keary Colbert and Mike Williams
picked apart the Wolverines' highly-regarded secondary,
after watching the Trojans rack up nine sacks against a Michigan offensive line that had allowed 15 all season,
after watching their defense hold All-America running back Chris Perry largely in check,
AP voters will have no trouble justifying their expected opinion.
"I think we stated our case to being No. 1," said USC defensive end Shaun Cody, "by beating them so handily."
...
Fact is, what Pete Carroll's team did, both in this game and all season, only looked easy.
The effort that went into it was actually quite remarkable,
and it's only fitting they'll be rewarded with a spot atop the final AP poll when it comes out late Sunday night.
As for that other poll -- that, of course, is a whole other can of worms.
After the game, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr reaffirmed that he would adhere to the coaches'
pre-existing agreement with the BCS to vote the Sugar Bowl winner No. 1,
but there remains to be the slight possibility that other coaches will, as Carroll put it, "rebel."
For their part, the Trojans, as they've been for most of the last month,
were universal Thursday night in their insistence that they really don't care
that they'll probably have to share their title.
"What matters to me is we accomplished everything we could possibly accomplish,"
an extremely amped-up Carroll said in his postgame news conference.
"No one will ever be able to take that away from us no matter how the polls go."
Of course, when asked whether his team would welcome a chance to play the Oklahoma-LSU winner a week from now,
he lit up like a Christmas tree, as did an assortment of players.
"It would be great to play Oklahoma next week," said Nazel, "but I don't think they'd really want to see us."
Certainly not if the Trojans plan to make that one look this easy.
Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com."
It is silly that we have to show that USC would be favored against either LSU or Oklahoma.
In NCAA basketball we let the tournament decide everything.
This type of change for football is long overdo.
We don't need 64 teams, even a small 8 team tourney would be a dramatic improvement over the BCS joke that is in place today.
The OC Register and other publications across the country noticed immediately when the head of the BCS
admitted that mistakes were made in the 2003 season.
The January 5, 2004 OC Register article BCS head concedes 'mistake' from Register news services
has some interesting points,
"NEW ORLEANS – Conceding "we made a mistake," the head of the BCS said an NCAA basketball
tournament-style committee might become part of the selection process next season
- reducing the possibility of a split national championship in football.
BCS coordinator Mike Tranghese said Sunday that several changes could be discussed in the coming months,
from the elimination of computers as a selection factor to adding an extra Bowl Championship Series game.
...
"We've got a system that somehow leaves the No. 1 team in both human polls out of the championship game,"
Tranghese told a group of football writers. "We've got to do something."
One possibility that would address several different proposals is to set up a panel modeled after the one
that selects the field for the 65-team NCAA basketball tournament.
...
"Computers don't calculate when you lose a game," Tranghese said.
"The polls are a reflection of your performance from week to week.
We should have thought of that. We made a mistake, and we should be criticized." "
This sounds a lot like the start of a 4 team playoff tournament.
This would be much better than the current system.
The amount of controversy over the would be greatly reduced.
Instead of writing about the top 2 teams that get to play each other,
writers would look at the top 4 teams that get to make it into the tournament.
In the case of the 2003 regular season, USC, Oklahoma and LSU all would have made it in.
Whether or not Michigan got the 4th place spot in 2003 would not have stirred up
a whole lot of controversy.
Playoffs will solve the types of issues seen in the 2003 regular season.
Even if it is only 8 teams we will avoid the problems that are seen today.
For example, if two teams both deserve the number 8 seed it is not nearly as much a controversy as
two teams deserving the number 3 seed today. We see this in basketball. There is debate as to
which teams should make the 65 team field but people reason that it may be better to limit
the field to 65 and to have debate then to expand the field to 128. Football should follow this model.
Moving to an 8 team playoff system will take a lot of heat off the NCAA and restore
credibility to college football.
USC Rose Bowl Game Results
1923 USC 14 Penn State 3
1930 USC 47 Pittsburgh 14
1932 USC 21 Tulane 12
1933 USC 35 Pittsburgh 0
1939 USC 7 Duke 3
1940 USC 14 Tennessee 0
1944 USC 29 Washington 0
1945 USC 25 Tennessee 0
1946 Alabama 34 USC 14
1948 Michigan 49 USC 0
1953 USC 7 Wisconsin 0
1955 Ohio State 20 USC 7
1963 USC 42 Wisconsin 37
1967 Purdue 14 USC 13
1968 USC 14 Indiana 3
1969 Ohio State 27 USC 16
1970 USC 10 Michigan 3
1973 USC 42 Ohio State 17
1974 Ohio State 42 USC 21
1975 USC 18 Ohio State 17
1977 USC 14 Michigan 6
1979 USC 17 Michigan 10
1980 USC 17 Ohio State 16
1985 USC 20 Ohio State 17
1988 Michi State 20 USC 17
1989 Michigan 22 USC 14
1990 USC 17 Michigan 10
1996 USC 41 Northwestern 32
2004 USC 28 Michigan 14
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