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Sporting News, The, Jan 9, 1995 by Terry Frei

Confession: If Penn State had been a little more compelling in Monday's Rose Bowl, this was going to be about how unfair it was for NBC and the rest of the pontificating sporting world to flatly proclaim Nebraska the national champion while the water was still dripping off Tom Osborne on New Year's night.

After all, Penn State seemed destined to dismantle Oregon the next afternoon in the Rose Bowl (on ABC), and at least a reasonable case then could have been made for the Nittany Lions as the nation's top team. And Joe Paterno's request for voters to at least keep their minds open through the bowl weekend was reasonable. Wait. Watch. Think. Then decide.

"Quite frankly, nobody in this country deserves a national championship more than Tom Osborne," Paterno said during the week leading up to the Nittany Lions' 38-20 victory in the Rose Bowl last Monday. "I think Tom has been a great guy for college football, and he's a really good friend of mine . . . I will not be unhappy if Tom Osborne and Nebraska win a national title, if that's the way it turns out. All I ask is that everybody takes a good, honest look at the squads if we are fortunate enough to beat Oregon. Look at the schedules we have played. Don't have preassumed ideas about the schedules and give both squads a fair shake."

Preassumed ideas?

That show in Miami made you wonder that if Richard Nixon were still alive, NBC might have brought him to the bowels of the Orange Bowl to present the Cornhuskers with some sort of national championship plaque, again angering an otherwise loyal Republican named Paterno. Remember, Nixon anointed Texas the No. 1 team in the nation after Texas defeated Arkansas in December 1969. That came after Paterno and Penn State had just completed its second consecutive undefeated, uncrowned season.

On New Year's night, here was Bob Costas and the rest of the NBC crew, talking about the power of being No. 1 entering the bowl season, acting as if the national championship had been decided. Hmmm. Wonder how NBC would have reacted if it (and not ABC) had been carrying the Rose Bowl the next afternoon? It's a good guess that the NBC promotional announcement would have sounded something like: "Tune back in for Act II of this national championship drama tomorrow!"

"To be honest with you, that annoyed me," Paterno said of NBC's approach. Can you blame the man? For the fourth time in his career, he was going to end the season without a loss, but without a national championship 1968. 1969. 1973. 1994.

Even his players, who weren't born or who were in diapers during those other disappointments, understood the history of a program that did earn No. 1 rankings after the 1982 and '86 seasons. They knew that winning all their games wasn't enough to win sufficient votes for a national championship, and at least one of them understood that for the second consecutive season, a veteran coach - a sympathetic choice - finally was winning a national championship.

It was Florida State's Bobby Bowden last season . . . when a reasonable alternative would have been Notre Dame.

This year, Tom Osborne.

Have a towel, Tom.

And practice the speeches for the trophy presentations.

"The thing that really got me was how on TV last night, they already gave them the championship, without seeing our game," says Penn State tailback Ki-Jana Carter, who ran for 156 yards against Oregon and shared player of the game honors with Ducks quarterback Danny O'Neil. "(Nebraska is) a great team. But the least they could do is split it up. Give us one and give them one. We worked too hard to get where we're at, and they did, too. Even though they feel sorry for Tom Osborne, I haven't got a championship and the rest of my teammates don't either. They need to look at that, too.

"It's unfortunate because the Big Ten and the Pac-10 aren't in the bowl coalition, so NBC's going to do whatever they can do to put their No. 1 team into one of their bowls. All of that's all politics."

Penn State quarterback Kerry Collins says, "We're going to anoint ourselves national champions, how's that sound? We're going to have a ring with a big fat '1' in the middle of it with a lot of diamonds."

Paterno, a longtime proponent of a playoff system, says he didn't have to give any No. 1 speeches to his team. "All you can do is win all your football games," he says. "We've gotten criticized for our schedule by some people who don't know what they're talking about. The Big Ten is a good, tough conference. I think that was proved by the results in the postseason games. I think you could look at some of the other (bowl) games. Oklahoma wasn't very impressive. Kansas State wasn't very impressive." Paterno's point was that those Big Eight teams helped establish "Nebraska's schedule as tougher than ours."

Without a playoff system, it's too bad there wasn't a simple solution. Get the coaches who vote in the CNN/USA Today poll and the writers who vote in the AP poll to collude and give the nation another split championship, as in Georgia Tech/Colorado in 1990 and Washington/Miami in 1991. But the fact was, even if someone went into the bowl weekend with that nobly open mind, the vote begrudgingly could have gone to Nebraska.