Poll Position

Sporting News, The, Dec 11, 2000 by Tom Dienhart

No. 1 Oklahoma books a trip to the Orange Bowl in Miamibut did not to play the hometown Hurricanes, who--fairly or not--are heading somewhere else

The victors walked up a long, dark ramp deep beneath Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. It was cold. In an hour or so, Saturday night would become Sunday morning for the only undefeated team in the nation. Time for bed? Hey, this wasn't a school night. And these were the newly minted Big 12 champs. Who was going to tell the Oklahoma Sooners what to do?

In a few weeks, this Midwest chill will be a memory for the Sooners, who are headed to the Orange Bowl to play Florida State after beating Kansas State in the Big 12 title game.

That made these guys in the red sweat suits smile, but right then their stomachs growled. Each player held a packed duffel bag in one hand while balancing dinner in the other. Inside the beige Styrofoam containers was fried chicken. That's right. The filet mignon of college football was celebrating its biggest victory of the season with greasy, high-fat wings, thighs and legs. That's what the champs from Conference USA and the Mountain West should eat to celebrate--not the kings of the beef-fed Big 12.

But anything the Sooners swallowed tasted good washed down with their 27-24 victory over Kansas State. If Oklahoma wins the national championship January 3 by beating FSU, a bigger least surely will be in store. And it won't be pre-packaged and fried.

"We're going to enjoy this one for a week or two," says Sooners quarterback Josh Heupel, who is quickly corrected by his coach, Bob Stoops. "We're going to enjoy it longer than that, Josh," Stoops says. "We don't have to play next week."

A good working title for the 2000 Oklahoma Sooners is Accidental National Title Contenders. These guys weren't even supposed to win the Big 12 South. Most picked Texas to win the South title and Nebraska to claim the overall league crown. The national title? Nebraska and Florida State grabbed those preseason headlines. The 2000 Sooners surely wouldn't be mistaken for the bad boys of 1985, the last OU team to be champion. The Boz is gone; he's now some 200-pound Clark Kent lookalike named Brian Bosworth. Bootlegger's boy Barry Switzer is in the stands drinking Coke. And all those Boomer Sooner option plays are all but jammed in the back of a filing cabinet in an office somewhere in Norman.

But there was Oklahoma, the picture of regular-season perfection for the first time since 1987, the last time OU won a league rifle. The season ended with a loss to Miami for the national championship. The Sooners posed for an impromptu team photo at the 30-yard line of the east end of Arrowhead Stadium. Stoops still was coaching. He was directing players where to go, squeezing guys into the back row and tucking a few into an already cramped middle section. And he had to find a place for Heupel. Stoops motioned to some big guys down front to make room for the quarterback with a rubber arm. Heupel squeezed in, plopped down on the hard turf and stuck up the index finger on his right hand: No. 1.

Finally, Stoops nudged his way in and smiled, and the cameras started saving memories.

"I hope that Oklahoma goes on to win the national championship for the Big 12," says Kansas State coach Bill Snyder, whose Wildcats finished 10-3. "They have a great team."

Snyder is correct. That's why it was easy for the Sooners and their fans to smile on this cold night. But the mood at the same moment in Miami was frigid. If the Sooners found their victory to be finger-lickin' good, it meant the Hurricanes were denied a chance to play the Seminoles for the national championship. In their own back yard, no less.

Miami could see this coming for weeks, but the reality still hurt. The Hurricanes had been headed for No. 3 in the Bowl Championship Series ranking throughout the later stages of the season. Oklahoma's win over K-State saved forever this order on the BCS computer's hard drive: Oklahoma No. 1, Florida State No. 2, Miami No. 3.

No one has a problem with the Sooners getting an invite to the biggest game of the year. But Florida State? Remember, 10-1 Miami beat 10-1 FSU in October. Plus, the Hurricanes rank No. 2--ahead of No. 3 Florida State-in every poll on Earth except that oh-so-complex BCS poll. The founding fathers of the BCS knew this type of controversy could develop. They just hoped it never would.

And, all went well the first two years of the fancy-schmantzy BCS system. All of its quartiles and quotients added up perfectly with no numbers left over to round up or down. In 1998, Tennessee met Florida State for the rifle in the Fiesta Bowl. The nation nodded. In 1999, Virginia Tech battled Florida State for the crown in the Sugar Bowl. The country concurred.

This year, the BCS doesn't look so smart. Its cold, hard-wired ways look cruel and confusing when compared to the man-on-the-street logic applied in making a case for Miami: Hurricanes beat Seminoles, Hurricanes rank higher in most polls than Seminoles. Hurricanes are better than Seminoles. (Never mind that Washington beat Miami early in the season; this became a three-horse race that Washington never was in.)