I have said it over and over agian. The ONLY reason USC recieved as much love as they did from the human polls is because they lost one week before we did. If they had lost on the same week, or the next week after I firmly believe that LSU would have been number one in both the AP Poll and the Coaches Poll the last week of the regular season. On the subject of who got snubbed the worst its a no contest. USC got it bad, no doubt, but they lost. They had their chance at a perfect season and shot themselves in the foot against Cal. They forfieted their undeniable right when they lost to Cal. Auburn on the other hand did EVERYTHING right and still got left out. There is nothing more they could have done. That is the true definition of a snub. Auburn played by the rules did exactly what they were told they had to do (going undefeated) and it still wasn't good enough. Auburn got screwed. USC got left out. There is a difference.
Glad to see the Trojans still feel the pain. There was never any doubt about LSU. Your beef is with the Oklahoma choice.
I used it as a matter of explanation as to why Auburn could not justify jumping a #1 wire to wire undefeated team and why the snub was #2 instead of #1. The point of the article was BCS snubs, not a re-hash of the 2003, 2004 arguments. Two teams get to play in a NC game. Who should Auburn have been playing in the game then? Oklahoma?
Auburn should have been playing USC in the title game; I'm not sure who would've won, but I don't believe it would've been the easy romp it was for the Trojans if they'd have faced the '04 AU team.
IMO, Auburn should've played USC, but that is only because my personal opinion holds that OU had an easier, untested trip than USC did. Teams should not be held to different standards when determining a national champion, yet they are in the current BCS model. Nobody minds if USC wins the BCS, but they should be held to the same standards required by any other team. It's way to late to address Auburn's 2004 slight, however , it is painfully obvious to even the most casual of observers that the system is fatally flawed and needs to be fixed in order to preserve the integrity of the game.
This is assuming that the team deserved to be #1 wire-to-wire. Who's to say that USC was better than Auburn all year long? The voters put USC #1 to start the year, then followed the good ole "can't drop them if they don't lose" belief all the way to the end of the year. Doesn't make USC more deserving, just means they had a head start.
Auburn 2004. I don't care who beat who the year before there's no way an undefeated SEC team shouldn't be playing in the championship game.
Auburn could have started the year ranked #2 and I still don't believe they would have jumped USC. Who else had a better argument to start the year #1? We returned 13 starters (including Matt Leinart, Lendale White, Lofa Tatupu, Sean Cody, Mike Patterson, Steve Smith, Reggie was there but not a starter in 2003), 72 overall squadmen with over 50 who saw playing time in 2003. At the time we had a 15 home game winning streak plus the longest current Pac-10 win streak for overall games (9), Pac-10 games (7) and road games (5). I'm pretty sure that ANY SEC team that went wire to wire and then got dropped for not losing would be considered a national incident. There are plenty of teams who, in that situation, deserve to stay #1 unless there were some glaring schedule issue.
There are at least 3 conferences who will make the same claim (well, they all will). There are also plenty of fans (none here I realize) who believe that wins against Div1AA or subdivision teams (FCS i.e. The Citadel) should become a penalty in terms of the BCS formula as well as more consideration for Home/Away balance.
Schedules are so volatile that putting that in the BCS formula would never work. The NCAA would have to crack down on teams backing out of contracts like Va. Tech did to us in 04'. And they would have to provide teams that rely on that extra home game revenue some incentive.
