College Football Championships with A Plus-One: The 2000 Season
The first edition of this series introduces the Plus-One concept with an important note: A Plus-One does not solve every national championship discrepancy of the BCS or College Football Playoff era. In that same vein, there are seasons in which a Plus-One would have been wholly unnecessary — imagine if USC and Texas had to trifle with Penn State and Notre Dame before getting to their classic.
And then, there’s the 2000 season, which doesn’t really fit in either category and — I will begrudgingly admit — may have been ideal for the current Playoff format. Maybe.
2000 needed a better postseason system than the BCS, to be sure. Undefeated Oklahoma was an obvious choice for the Orange Bowl, which doubled as the BCS Championship Game, but after that, the logjam for No. 2 dealt the Bowl Championship Series its first really significant blow.
Florida State ended up in the title game and was subsequently shut down by a historic Sooners defense in a snoozer of a title game. Meanwhile, Miami — which finished the regular season with the same record as Florida State…oh, and BEAT FLORIDA STATE HEAD-TO-HEAD!!!!! — blasted Florida by three scores in the Sugar Bowl, foreshadowing the Hurricanes’ dominance in the season to come.
Mucking up the situation, however, was that Miami’s one loss was also to a one-loss team: Pac-10 champion Washington.
The Huskies’ 34-29 win over the Hurricanes at Husky Stadium effectively kept The U out of the BCS Championship Game — which explains why Miami so mercilessly ran up the score on the Dawgs a year later.
Between that and 1994’s The Whammy in Miami, the Hurricanes owed Washington a serious receipt. Patreon subscribers can check out the deep dive on that game. And speaking of Patreon-exclusive content, a column on the Bryan Harsin situation (but actually an extended Jason Whitlock joke) is now live over there, as well.
Anyway, the 2000 regular season produced a mess that exposed the flaws inherit with the BCS. At the same time, a four-team Playoff may not have been a better solution than a Plus-One.
The four-team setup lacks fluidity that Plus-One offers, and which would be particularly useful this season. While Oklahoma plus the trio of Florida State/Miami/Washington seems on the surface like a perfect final four. And indeed, it’s significantly better than the rotten Orange Bowl the BCS served up.
However, there were two more one-loss teams from the BCS conferences at the end of the regular season: Oregon State out of the Pac-10, and Virginia Tech from the Big East.
Oregon State and Virginia Tech were ostensibly eliminated by virtue of losses to Washington and Miami — funny how the head-to-head factored in there, but not for Florida State — but there’s an interesting dynamic that comes into play with the Plus-One.
Oregon State actually shared the Pac-10 championship with Washington, but the head-to-head win sent the Huskies to the Rose Bowl. But the Beavers beat rival Oregon, which handed Washington its lone loss.
The 2001 Ducks will factor prominently into the next Plus-One installment, and their role in the championship picture is foreshadowed in 2000.
Virginia Tech has a less of a claim for Plus-One consideration by virtue of not splitting the conference title; the Hokies’ sole loss was to Miami, which ran the table in the Big East. What’s more, Virginia Tech ended the regular season without a win over a team ranked in the final Top 25.
Oregon State, on the other hand, beat a top 10-ranked opponent in Oregon. The Beavers’ forecast for reaching the Plus-One title game isn’t smooth, but certainly doable with the layout I have chosen.
Now, you may wonder why Oregon State factoring into the title picture, which it wouldn’t with a four-team playoff, matters given its loss to Washington. The reason is how much all of the teams in the title mix were beating up on each other in the regular season.
Here’s the rundown of teams playing in the Plus-One pool facing off in the regular season. It’s remarkable to revisit schedules in the early years of the BCS and realize just how much stronger power-conference programs scheduled in those days.
That changed in part due to conference realignment, most notably Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami leaving the Big East for the ACC. But the philosophy seemingly shifted across the board more and more in the latter half of the 2000s, commensurate with the SEC’s dominance of the title picture.
Here’s what they took from us; a veritable season-long playoff with marquee games in every month of the regular season:
Sept. 9: Washington beats Miami*, 34-29
Sept. 30: Oregon beats Washington, 23-16
Oct. 7: Washington beats Oregon State, 33-30; Miami beats Florida State*, 27-24
Nov. 4: Miami beats Virginia Tech, 41-21
Nov. 18: Florida State beats Florida*, 30-7; Oregon State beats Oregon, 23-13
*- indicates non-conference games
ROSE BOWL: No. 4 Washington vs. No. 14 Purdue
Drew Brees led Purdue to its first Rose Bowl since 1967. The Boilermakers earned the bid through a truly weird set of circumstances, as Michigan and Northwestern finished with 6-2 Big Ten records to match Purdue.
Despite Brees’ outstanding individual season, Purdue wasn’t the most awe-inspiring opponent for a Washington team with national championship aspirations. In general, that exposes a weakness in the Plus-One system relying on traditional bowl pairings — but, in this instance, it works.
Washington goes into the Rose Bowl with a simple “win-and-you’re-in” path to the championship by virtue of its head-to-head wins over Miami and Oregon State. Drawing a relatively middling bowl-game opponent makes that much easier prospect, akin to a top seed in the NCAA Tournament drawing the No. 16 representative of a low-major conference.
SUGAR BOWL: No. 6 Virginia Tech vs. No. 7 Florida
Of the six teams in the mix, Virginia Tech is the least realistic contender for the Plus-One berth. It’s a shame, because Michael Vick was outstanding coming off the stellar one-man show he put on in the previous year’s national championship game.
However, Virginia Tech gets docked for its schedule paling considerably in comparison to the rest of the field.
The Hokies would need to rout SEC champion Florida — not out of the question, considering the Gators were trounced by Florida State in the regular season, and in the real world lost a lopsided Sugar Bowl to Miami. Florida also dropped an SEC game to Mississippi State, which finished .500 in conference play.
But then Virginia Tech’s only hope would be Oregon State beating Miami to eliminate the Hurricanes — but not emphatically enough to impress pollsters or computers determining the title game — and Washington losing a blowout to Purdue, thus sullying the blemish on the Beavers’ schedule.
ORANGE BOWL: No. 1 Oklahoma vs. No. 3 Florida State
The actual 2001 Orange Bowl was a dud, but may have been more palatable as a semifinal to the true national championship. In this exercise, that’s exactly the role the Oklahoma-Florida State matchup serves.
Bob Stoops’ only national title team boasted a stacked defense with Rocky Calmus, Teddy Lehman, Derrick Strait and an all-time personal favorite, Roy Williams. Chris Weinke won the Heisman at Florida State that season, though it really should have been LaDainian Tomlinson.
Nevertheless, the pairing of a stout defense and the Heisman winning makes for an exciting Orange Bowl with the winner possibly advancing to the title game.
Oklahoma’s a given; win and they’re in. But Florida State would need Miami and Washington to lose its bowl games, as well, which is where the wild regular season really comes into play.
FIESTA BOWL: No. 2 Miami vs. No. 5 Oregon State
The actual 2001 Fiesta Bowl was a laugher, with a Notre Dame team that was there mostly on the strength of beating Purdue early in the season (and the Notre Dame brand name) getting absolutely wrecked by an Oregon State bunch that had national championship chops.
Current Beavers coach Jonathan Smith was throwing to a loaded wide-receiving corps, which included T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Chad Johnson. The latter makes this Fiesta Bowl matchup especially intriguing, having grown up and playing his high school ball in Miami.
Oregon State landing a Miami recruit might be a shocker for those unfamiliar with the backstory, but Johnson played JUCO ball in Los Angeles. What’s more, the Beavers coach in 2000 was none other than Dennis Erickson, the last coach to win a national championship at Miami by this point in time.
Erickson facing off against his former program — and a fan base that harbored some hard feelings over how his tenure ended, despite it producing two national titles — is a juicy enough subplot on its own.
Add the stakes of a potential national championship, and this Fiesta Bowl becomes the jewel of my Plus-One format.
Neither is a simple win-and-you’re-in team, especially not Oregon State. Miami would need a Washington loss in the Rose Bowl to advance, but otherwise goes into Tempe in good shape.
Oregon State’s road isn’t even that difficult, realistically needing only two of the three scenarios to play out:
Beat Miami
Washington loses to Purdue
Oklahoma beats Florida State (a Seminoles win gives FSU a better marquee win than Oregon State)