College Football Championships with A Plus-One: The 2007 Season

The 2007 season is rightly remembered as one of the most entertaining, chaotic and unpredictable of the 21st Century, and perhaps ever.

This was a season in which USF, Boston College, West Virginia and Kansas all reached No. 2 in the polls at various junctures in the season. In the penultimate AP Top 25, the top two spots were occupied by Missouri and West Virginia, which would have made for a unique, enthralling BCS Championship Game.

So, of course, we instead ended up with the anti-climactic finale of two-loss LSU pummeling an Ohio State team that defaulted its way into the title game. Sigh.

The Plus-One concept isn’t perfect, but likely would have spared us such a downer of a finale to what was otherwise one of the all-time great football seasons. A Plus-One national championship might also have created an unfulfilling logjam with teams claiming worthiness of a spot, though.

Rose Bowl Game: No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 6 USC

USC’s Pete Carroll dynasty spans from 2002, beginning with Carson Palmer’s Heisman Trophy win and the Trojans’ Orange Bowl romp against Iowa, and ending with the 2008 team that had a strong argument for the BCS Championship (more on that in the next Plus-One installment). SC won at least a share of every Pac-10 championship in that time and claims two national titles, but the Trojans came a few baffling losses away from claiming more national championships.

The ‘07 campaign is the best example. While the 2006 team may not have stacked up with BCS champion Florida, the 2007 Trojans absolutely had the juice to beat LSU in a hypothetical matchup.

A defense that performed at historical levels in ‘08 featured many of the same key players in ‘07, and produced at a comparable level. John David Booty was no world-beater at quarterback but was at least competent, and had a trio of solid running backs supporting him in Joe McKnight, Chauncey Washington Stafon Johnson.

That all combines to make the loss to Stanford, the biggest Las Vegas upset in college football history¹, all the more astounding. The Cardinal win — a landmark moment in the under-appreciated and all-too-brief history of Versus Network — kicked off the Jim Harbaugh-Pete Carroll rivalry, and ostensibly denied USC a spot in the BCS title game.

A Rose Bowl win over top-ranked Ohio State in the Plus-One format may have been enough to launch the Trojans into the title picture. Maybe.

USC finished strong after a late-October loss at Oregon — a team that would have been at the forefront of the championship hunt were it not for Dennis Dixon’s torn ACL — beating Cal² and Arizona State teams ranked in the Top 25.

Beating Ohio State in the Rose Bowl may not have been enough on its own, though, given the multitude of one-and-two-loss teams jammed in the top 10.

Sugar Bowl: No. 2 LSU vs. No. 7 Missouri

LSU emerged from the chaos of 2007 the first and only two-loss champion of the BCS era. The Tigers were just the second in the run of seven straight SEC national champions, so backlash to the conference hadn’t yet really started. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it’s not unfair to deem this the weakest of the seven and one of the less deserving of its title shot.

The SEC of 2007 was not as collectively strong as in 2006, with Alabama in the lone year of rebuilding under Nick Saban, Florida undergoing a minor reset after its BCS title the previous year, and Auburn beginning to peter out at the end of Tommy Tuberville’s tenure.

What’s more, what was arguably the conference’s best team by season’s end, Georgia, missed the SEC Championship thanks to a fluky, early-season loss to Steve Spurrier and South Carolina and a setback against Tennessee. The Vols claimed the East by virtue of beating the Bulldogs, but were beaten pretty resoundingly by Cal, blown out by a good-not-great Florida team, and got blasted by a thoroughly middling Alabama team.

So, far LSU to advance to the title game with losses to Kentucky and an Arkansas team that underperformed per preseason expectations all season, was a little iffy — even if those were two of the best games of a season filled with outstanding games.

All that said: LSU blasted ACC champion Virginia Tech in the non-conference season, closed out with a top 20 win by beating Tennessee, and with a win here in the Sugar Bowl, would have been the only team other than Ohio State in the Rose Bowl going into the Plus-One postseason facing a win-and-you’re-in situation.

Virginia Tech would have been the matchup here, though a criteria as set by…well, me, dictates that the Plus-One format avoids rematches when possible. While the Sugar Bowl hosted ACC teams in the past, the ACC was not historically linked to the bowl. Thus, we forge on for the highest-ranked opponent not committed to another bowl, leaving Missouri³.

Chase Daniel was a Heisman finalist in 2007, and it would have been awesome seeing him lead the Mizzou offense against a defense featuring a player who deserved to be a Heisman finalist, LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey.

Missouri closed out the regular season handing second-ranked Kansas its only loss of the season in an instant classic and, were it not for matching up poorly with Oklahoma, would have been the clubhouse leader for a spot in the BCS Championship Game.

But, MU did match up poorly with Oklahoma, and the Sooners accounted for both of Mizzou’s losses. That puts Missouri in the Sugar Bowl, needing to keep a watchful eye on the Orange Bowl while looking to knock off LSU in an ostensible road game.

Orange Bowl: No. 3 Oklahoma vs. No. 4 Georgia

By virtue of its season sweep against Missouri, Oklahoma goes to the Orange Bowl under the historic Big 12 tie-in with a matchup against at-large Georgia.

Arguably, Oklahoma would have the strongest case to move into the Plus-One championship regardless of how the other bowls unfolded with a defeat of the red-hot Bulldogs; after all, Missouri was ranked No. 1 going into the Big 12 Championship Game. No other team could boast such a strong two-game finish, even with a one-score loss in mid-November at Texas Tech just before the closing stretch.

The Texas Tech loss effectively kept OU out of the BCS Championship Game, even with two wins against the team that was No. 1 going into Championship Week, and losing the Fiesta Bowl to West Virginia may have been validating for keeping the Sooners out. But taking what was something of a letdown game in the Fiesta Bowl out of the conversation, Oklahoma presents a strong case for a title shot.

Sam Bradford set the foundation for his Heisman run the next year with an impressive 36 touchdowns, while the Sooner running-back rotation was ridiculous: Allen Patrick, DeMarco Murry and Chris Brown each rushed for a double-digit number of touchdowns.

That offense opposite a Georgia defense that had Geno Atkins and Marucs Howard making life miserable for opposing backfields has me salivating. And, let’s not short-change the talent on that Bulldogs offense: Matthew Stafford didn’t grow into a star until he went pro, but was more than competent playing alongside Knowshon Moreno and Thomas Brown, who combined to surpass 2,000 yards rushing.

Georgia by season’s end was completely different team than in the first five weeks of ‘07 when it lost to South Carolina and Tennessee. That said, the whole season does have to factor into deciding the national championship; a Bulldogs team that failed to win its division would thus be lowering in the Plus-One title-game queue than fellow championship hopefuls that won their conference.

That would put Georgia in a precarious spot. Some leeway could be granted in the case of a team like Hawaii that went undefeated but had only one win over a team ranked in the final regular-season Top 25, Boise State. Big East champ West Virginia plummeted in the polls after losing its regular-season finale, but the Mountaineers beat as many teams ranked in the final Top 25 (USF, Cincinnati) as Georgia (Auburn, Florida) and ACC champion Virginia Tech beat more (Virginia, Clemson, Boston College) while also avenging one of its two losses by virtue of knocking off BC in the ACC Championship Game.

Fiesta Bowl: No. 10 Hawaii vs. No. 8 Kansas

Hawaii’s 2007 season marked the culmination of a building process that began a few seasons prior. June Jones’ run-and-shoot offense put the Rainbow Warriors ahead of the direction most of college football went in the decade that followed, utilizing every inch of the field on offense to spread out and wear down defenses.

Timmy Chang set records and Hawaii became a fun team to follow in the pre-social media era, but the Colt Brennan era really took UH to another level. Anyone who followed Hawaii in 2006 knew the potential for 2007, and it’s a shame that season ended the way it did.

UH received a BCS bowl bid by virtue of the regular season being so chaotic, but drew an awful matchup with a Georgia team that was hitting its stride, and played in the heart of SEC Country. Perhaps the Rainbow Warriors would have face-planted regardless its opponent, but Georgia just seemed like such an especially bad match based on styles and personnel.

With the acknowledgement this game would function less as part of the Plus-One national title race, and more just to be a fun bowl matchup with some historic value, the two biggest surprises of the 2007 season facing off on New Year’s Day could be a blast.

Kansas failing to win its division knocks it from the national title game equation, essentially putting the Jayhawks in the same spot as Georgia being behind conference champs in the queue. However, KU would have plenty to play for in one of the most prominent bowls and a record-setting season in reach.

Mark Mangino, one of the more underrated offensive minds of the last 25 years, had a Jayhawks offense that scored almost 43 points per game. Against the high-powered Hawaii offense with Heisman finalist Brennan, which produced a nation-leading 43.4 points per game, KU could have found itself in a track meet for the ages.

What’s more, I have noted in past entries in the Plus-One series that the Fiesta Bowl was founded in the early ‘70s as a showcase for the Western Athletic Conference when its highly ranked Arizona State teams of the Frank Kush era were frozen out of other postseason opportunities.

Hawaii having the opportunity to carry on that legacy adds a worthy chapter to the bowl’s history.

Peach Bowl: No. 5 Virginia Tech vs. No. 11 West Virginia

Saving the most potentially chaotic entry for last. West Virginia was positioned to waltz into the BCS Championship Game as Missouri was overmatched in the Big 12 Championship Game; all the Mountaineers had to do was beat rival Pitt, which struggled all season.

But what would have been the crowning achievement of Rich Rodriguez’s steady build of West Virginia into an upper-echelon program instead became perhaps the most notorious upset of the wild 2007 season.

Now, I have discovered in the past few years that there are a startling number of people who believe had West Virginia beaten Pitt and advanced to the BCS Championship Game, Rich Rod would have remained in Morgantown.

But having read John U. Bacon’s excellent book Three and Out on Rodriguez’s abortive tenure at Michigan, that simply isn’t the case. Rodriguez was at odds with West Virginia brass in ways that foreshadowed WVU’s inability to regain the success it enjoyed during his tenure for the 15 years since he left.

Further, after having to wear some egg on its face with how its pursuit of Les Miles concluded — with Miles shooting down Kirk Herbstreit’s report the LSU coach was leaving for Ann Arbor with his famous “Have a GREAT day” address — Michigan athletics was going to do whatever it took to avoid missing out on a second hot name in the coaching carousel.

Anyway, that’s all to say win or lose in the Backyard Brawl, Bill Stewart was destined to coach West Virginia’s bowl game. And in my Plus-One reimagining of the 2007 postseason, we get a butterfly effect that potentially leads to West Virginia looking elsewhere for its next head coach.

The Mountaineers regrouped from losing to Pitt with a win over a disinterested Oklahoma bunch in the Fiesta Bowl. Pat White, one of the most electrifying college quarterbacks I have ever seen, almost singlehandedly won Stewart the head-coaching vacancy with his performance in Glendale.

Perhaps he replicates that showing in Atlanta against Virginia Tech. White was that damn good for much of his career, after all. But the Hokies head into the Peach Bowl under this scenario very much alive for a berth in the Plus-One national championship.

Getting shellacked by LSU early in the season effectively eliminated the Hokies from the BCS title picture, and certainly would have put them behind the Tigers in line for the National Championship Game with an LSU win over Missouri in the Sugar Bowl.

However, Virginia Tech is line ahead of Georgia by virtue of winning its conference and having more end-of-season Top 25 wins. Ditto Missouri in the event of an MU win in the Sugar Bowl, or Kansas in the Fiesta Bowl.

In a scenario that sees both Tech and USC winning their bowl games, Frank Beamer’s team has an edge by virtue of its losses coming to teams ranked in the top 15 at the end of the regular season, one of which Tech beat in a rematch; USC would be hampered by its loss to Stanford.

Va. Tech playing for the championship in ‘07 intrigues me because, aside from the LSU game, the defense was top-notch all season and absolutely loaded with talent. By season’s end, offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring seemed to have found a more effective balance in using a freshman Tyrod Taylor with Sean Glennon as the primary quarterback.

1. Stanford was a 41-point underdog in the ‘07 matchup. The record was broken 10 years later when Howard, with Cam Newton’s brother Caylin at quarterback, beat UNLV as a 45-point underdog. However, finding sports books taking action on Howard-UNLV was a tall task and by my standard, more a matter of technicality that it’s the more lopsided upset than Stanford-USC.

2. Cal went on a late-season slide beginning with the SC loss, but went into that matchup very much contending for the Pac-10 championship.

3. Although the highest-ranked unaccounted for team is actually Georgia, which LSU did not play in the regular season, pairing teams from the same conference in a bowl game is never advisable — and doing so for what would then effectively be a national semifinal would be REALLY bad, particularly when this exercise was born in part from the BCS reverse-engineering its way into SEC title-game participants in later years.