College Football Championships with a Plus-One: 2004 Season
The last few seasons in the Plus-One series have fluctuated remarkably. In 2002, anything beyond the National Championship Game between undefeated Miami and undefeated Ohio State proved wholly superfluous.
In 2003, a plus-one format would have solved one of the more egregious national title misfires of the Bowl Championship Series and perhaps provided an opportunity to one of the better, albeit forgotten, non-power conference teams of the era.
Now we have 2004. In general, I hate the College Football Playoff for myriad reasons, many (most?) of which have nothing to do with the actual format for determining a champion. But in terms of the format, the four-team system rarely seems to work as intended.
The 2004 campaign is the rare instance in which the CFP format would have been an ideal solution — assuming the selection committee operated correctly. Correctly in this case means USC vs. Utah in one semifinal, Oklahoma vs. Auburn in the other, and the winners meeting for the title.
That said, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in a hypothetical committee rewarding the clear top four and not leap-frogging Texas over Utah. Now, I would write leapfrogging Cal over Utah, since the Golden Bears ranked No. 4 in the final AP Poll of the regular season and the Utes were fifth. But lol at Cal getting the spot over Texas1.
So keeping in mind that this season was the rare exception when the Playoff would be ideal, I did my best to craft an equitable postseason under the guidelines. Where the real intrigue in this season lies isn’t in the national championship so much as the potential for high-profile bowl games outside of the plus-one scope.
2004 was a fascinating season for me as it unfolded in part due to rising outsiders. The final AP Top 10 of the regular featured three teams from non-BCS conferences: aforementioned Utah from the Mountain West; Louisville out of Conference USA; and Boise State from the WAC.
ROSE BOWL: No. 1 USC vs. No. 13 Michigan
You won’t find many more ardent supporters of the Rose Bowl traditions than me. I’ll go so far as to say the critics who want the game moved from its New Year’s Day spot and stripped of its status for the sake of a made-for-TV championship aren’t really fans of *college football*.
With that preamble out of the way, this matchup is a good example of flexibility in traditions not necessarily being a bad thing. Not including wartime installments when military-base teams played, the Rose Bowl wasn’t always the Pac-12 (and its forerunners) vs. the Big Ten (and its forerunners). Early incarnations featured teams from the Ivy League, the Southern Conference and the SEC.
While a Pac vs. B1G matchup is ideal, years in which one of the two leagues features a national championship contender while the other’s champion sits outside the top 10 should flex. In that case, USC would instead play one of the other undefeateds — the Orange Bowl matchup with Oklahoma that went down in reality could still occur, albeit on the opposite coast and with marching bands performing at halftime instead of Ashlee Simpson.
However, I didn’t specific that at the outset of this project. The result is a likely mismatch that gives one team a much more manageable path to the plus-one championship than the other contenders.
SUGAR BOWL: No. 3 Auburn vs. No. 5 Utah
This should have been the matchup in the BCS system, with both teams sporting perfect records. I also would have given the edge to Utah, which boasted a prolific offense behind Alex Smith and a stout defense coordinated by Kyle Whittingham.
Auburn featured an outstanding backfield, however, with Jason Campbell at quarterback and the dynamic rushing duo of Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown. It would have been a helluva matchup!
And, I believe for that very reason, it didn’t happen. Utah was sent to the Fiesta Bowl as the first-ever non-BCS program in a BCS bowl and played a wildly overmatched Pitt team that barely scratched the Top 25 despite winning the Big East’s automatic bid.
Depending how this hypothetical played out, the winner could realistically leapfrog No. 2 for the plus-one title game spot — assuming No. 2 were to win a tough bowl game of its own.
ORANGE BOWL: No. 2 Oklahoma vs. No. 4 Cal
While the Orange Bowl had some unique matchups early in its history, featuring such teams as Bucknell, Duquesne and Holy Cross, and inviting the University of San Francisco2, no program from the Pac played in the game until its 50th anniversary in 1985.
No. 4 Washington, coached by legendary Don James, knocked off Barry Switzer’s No. 2 Sooners in a memorable installment of the Orange Bowl.
Two decades later, imagine another No. 2 vs. No. 4 featuring a Big 8…er, 12 champion out of Norman — this time coached by legendary Bob Stoops — against a Pac team ranked No. 4 and under the guidance of one of the great coaching minds in West Coast football, Jeff Tedford.
OU featured the 2003 Heisman winner Jason White at quarterback and 2004 Heisman finalist Adrian Peterson at running back. Cal had Aaron Rodgers, but an underappreciated piece to that team was running back J.J. Arrington. Arrington was one of the first-ever 2,000-yard rushers not invited to the Heisman ceremony, a sadly fitting footnote to the repeated abuse the best of Tedford’s Golden Bears teams endured.
FIESTA BOWL: No. 6 Texas vs. No. 7 Louisville
I have noted in previous installments of the plus-one series that the Fiesta Bowl began as a much-needed showcase for outsiders in the West who lacked a high-profile bowl option. While not a Western program, the 2004 Louisville Cardinals would have been perfect representations of the Fiesta Bowl’s roots.
The Cardinals closed the regular season ranked No. 7, were clearly good enough to play in a BCS bowl and markedly better than the champion of the automatic-bid Big East — a league UL joined the following year and quickly won.
This ascension in the 2000s marked the culmination of a process that began under Howard Schnellenberger, that Mary Poppins of college football, whose uncanny ability to build programs from the ground-up solidified his legacy.
Louisville football was on death’s doorstep when Schnellenberger arrived, but his tenure reversed its fortunes dramatically. Bobby Petrino, for his many faults, has proven to be an excellent strategist and elevated Louisville to another level.
While UL’s 2004 concluded with one of the most exciting bowls of the decade — a 44-40 Liberty Bowl victory over fellow top 10-ranked outsider Boise State — it would have been so fun to see the Cardinals tested against Vince Young and Texas.
HOLIDAY BOWL: No. 9 Virginia Tech vs. No. 10 Boise State
The Holiday Bowl gained acclaim in the 1980s for its high-scoring installments featuring teams out of the Western Athletic Conference that flew under the national radar. San Diego’s postseason tradition played a key role in the growth of BYU football under LaVell Edwards, for example.
As the last power of the original WAC, Boise State’s first perfect regular season culminating in a Holiday Bowl would have been appropriate. The bowl had tie-ins to with the Pac-10 and Big 12 at the time, but the third-highest ranked Big 12 team after OU and Texas was 7-4 Texas A&M and the Pac’s No. 3, 8-3 Arizona State, was coming off a loss to 3-8 Arizona. What’s more, both the Aggies and Sun Devils barely made the Top 25.
Boise State deserved a top 10 opponent at the conclusion of what was really a four-year process, beginning with the Broncos’ 2001 upset of Fresno State3. I spurned tie-ins for this matchup and instead gave BSU a matchup with the highest-ranked squad remaining.
Virginia Tech won the ACC in its first year as a conference member. In reality, the Hokies went to the Sugar Bowl for a matchup with Auburn because the BCS lacked the guts to match Utah and AU.
The most enduring controversy of the 2004 postseason is Auburn being passed over for the BCS Championship for Oklahoma, and not receiving the votes for a split AP title with BCS winner USC. From a purely speculative POV, I see this as the impetus for much of today’s SEC media homerism and the league’s collective bellyaching when things either don’t go its way — or don’t go its way enough. However, the SEC galvanizing to become a dominant politic power happened later; Texas set a precedent for the importance of political clout that season.
For the uninitiated, Cal’s only loss came in an instant classic at USC. Aaron Rodgers, Heisman-potential running back J.J. Arrington (one of the few 2,000-plus-yard rushers in college football history to not receive an invite to New York) and the Golden Bears had the Trojans on the ropes. Their 10-1 finish seemingly positioned them for the program’s first Rose Bowl since the 1950s.
But Mack Brown hit the campaign trail almost as aggressively in the autumn of ‘04 as another Texas transplant.
A top 20-ranked USF team received an unofficial invite to the 1951 season’s Orange Bowl, but was expected to play without its Black athletes. USF declined, passing up on the payday that likely would have saved the Dons football program to remain steadfast in the team’s collective values.
I loved that Fresno State team, so I had personal beef with Boise State that never quite faded — not until the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, anyway.