Split Title Draws Split Reaction

By Mike DiGiovanna and Gary Klein

Jan. 5, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

The crystal football awarded to the bowl championship series national champion went to Louisiana State on Sunday night, but USC earned a share of its first national title since 1978 when the Trojans were voted No. 1 in the Associated Press poll.

No top-ranked team in AP poll history has been demoted after a bowl victory, and form held true this season when the AP’s panel of 65 writers and broadcasters kept USC, which finished first in the final regular-season media and coaches’ polls and defeated fourth-ranked Michigan, 28-14, in the Rose Bowl, atop its rankings.

Louisiana State won the BCS title by defeating Oklahoma, 21-14, on Sunday night in the Sugar Bowl.

USC Coach Pete Carroll will be presented with the AP national championship trophy today at 10:30 at Heritage Hall. He will then depart for Orlando, Fla., where he is scheduled to speak at a national coaches convention.

“The thing we’re obviously dealing with here is that there is a national championship that has been divided somewhat with the polling,” Carroll said late Sunday night. “But we know that we ended the season as the No. 1 team in the major polls and we went on and were able to defend that. ... So we feel very good about the season and we’re happy for the way things turned out, but also understanding there’s a system involved and that the system recognized LSU with their great effort as well. So congratulations to them once again.

“There’s always a chance it can be out of whack and it happened this year.... I think the argument about the system is out there now and that’s probably good. ... There’s no reason to be griping about it or anything else. I just think there’s a system issue here that may or may not be dealt with and fixed.”

USC finished 12-1 and won a share of its ninth national title, getting 48 of 65 first-place votes in the AP poll. Its last two championships, in 1974 and 1978, also were split titles.

LSU received 60 of 63 first-place votes in the coaches’ poll. The Trojans, with three first-place votes, finished second.

After watching the Sugar Bowl, USC senior center Norm Katnik said, “I was thinking, ‘That could have been me running out there,’ but it wasn’t, and we had a great time in the Rose Bowl. There are no regrets.

“We feel that we did what we needed to do, and we knew if we did that we would become partial national champions.”

Kenechi Udeze, USC’s All-American defensive end, added that the Sugar Bowl “didn’t feel like a national championship game.”

“When you play for the national championship, you want a chance to play for the crystal ball,” Udeze said. “But we’re happy that we got a chance to win a national championship in front of our fans at the Rose Bowl.”

Big East Conference Commissioner Mike Tranghese, who will step down as BCS coordinator after this season, said he would like to see the human element play a bigger role in the BCS rankings, perhaps giving more weight to the media and coaches’ polls and less to the computers.

But some longtime college football writers aren’t sure that would be a foolproof solution for a flawed system that resulted in the top team in both polls -- USC -- getting jilted by the BCS, which ranked Oklahoma and LSU ahead of the Trojans.

“I remember about five years ago, five of us [AP poll voters] were out to dinner after covering a game in Syracuse, and there was a really close margin between the No. 1 and 2 teams,” said Mark Blaudschun, who has covered college sports for the Boston Globe for 20 years.

“The joke was that the five of us could conspire to affect who plays in [the BCS title] game. That’s wrong. At the time, I talked to [former Southeastern Conference commissioner] Roy Kramer and [AP sports editor] Terry Taylor about recommending that football writers not vote in the poll.”

Blaudschun voted in the AP football poll for some 12 years before deciding to pull out two years ago when he said it became too difficult to rank the 10th through 25th teams. “But God, I’m glad I’m not voting this year,” Blaudschun said. “I cover the news. I don’t want to be the news.”

That’s precisely why Dick Weiss, who has covered college sports for the New York Daily News since 1983, relinquished his AP vote this season after participating in the AP rankings for 10 years.

“You don’t want to end up making the news, you want to report it,” Weiss said. “It’s almost collusion. Everyone has to take responsibility for this. I have my own opinion who should be No. 1 and who should be playing in [the Sugar Bowl], and they both revolve around USC.

“How’d you like to be one of the 37 coaches who voted for USC [in the final USA Today/ESPN poll] and then have to change your vote” because of an American Football Coaches Assn. mandate to select the Sugar Bowl winner as the national champion, he said. “It’s almost a fraud.”

Because of the controversy, USA Today had considered not running a final poll in today’s paper. Sunday afternoon, however, the newspaper decided it would publish the final results.

“We decided to go forward with it,” Jim Welch, the paper’s deputy managing editor/sports said. “But we will explain what the circumstances are.”

Weiss said this was a good year not to vote.

“It puts us in a compromising position any time we’re involved, and I’m not sure we should be selecting the teams that play in this game,” Weiss said. “I vote in the AP basketball poll, but that doesn’t affect the NCAA tournament. In football, you can directly affect the outcome. You take a chance of being accused of some type of prejudice, either way.”

Longtime Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden voted in the AP football poll for the first time this season, “and it will probably be my last,” he said. “This is a mess.” Layden said he was bailing out not so much because of the BCS controversy but because it became too difficult determining the bottom half of his rankings.

Layden moved USC from No. 2 to No. 1 after Oklahoma’s loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 Conference championship game Dec. 6, and he expected to keep the Trojans in the top spot Sunday night.

“But I don’t really know what team is better, USC or LSU. Anyone who says they do is full of [it], and that bothers me too..”

Mike DiGiovanna reported from New Orleans and Gary Klein from Los Angeles.