TROJANS COULD BE PEOPLE'S CHAMPIONS.Byline: KEVIN MODESTI If USC An abbreviation for U.S. Code. fans get over this Bowl Championship Series snub, they'll realize the Trojans are the lucky ones in the three-sided controversy. Sure, USC got robbed when the No. 1 team in the experts' polls was sent to the Rose Bowl to play Michigan while Oklahoma and Louisiana State were sent to the Sugar Bowl to play for the official national title. But would the Trojans actually want to trade places with the Sooners or the Tigers? Not if they quit complaining and start thinking this through. Oklahoma or LSU LSU Louisiana State University LSU Large Subunit LSU La Salle University (Philadelphia, PA) LSU La Sierra University LSU Link State Update (OSPF) LSU Learning Support Unit can win the coaches' rigged vote for No. 1 in the USA Today-ESPN poll and be the champion of the computers. USC can earn the writers' honest vote for No. 1 in the Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. poll and be the champion of the people. Oklahoma or LSU would be the champion of the establishment. USC would be the champion of reform. Oklahoma or LSU would be the champion of the system. USC would be the champion of common sense. Oklahoma or LSU would be remembered as the bandit bandit: see brigandage. . USC would be remembered as the victim. Oklahoma or LSU would be on the right side of a football score. USC would be on the right side of history. What would you rather have? A counterfeit national-title trophy? Or the sympathy of every living being outside Oklahoma, Louisiana and Westwood? The Trojans get to be heroic martyrs without suffering so much as a single burning-at-the-stake. Of course they'd rather be going to New Orleans New Orleans (ôr`lēənz –lənz, ôrlēnz`), city (2006 pop. 187,525), coextensive with Orleans parish, SE La., between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, 107 mi (172 km) by water from the river mouth; founded to play for an undisputed national title. Except that even if they were going to New Orleans, it wouldn't be undisputed. With three teams once-beaten and hard to separate, if USC hadn't been slighted, either Oklahoma or LSU would have been. Being No. 1 in the people polls run by major media organizations makes the BCS (1) (The British Computer Society, Swindon, Wiltshire, England, www.bcs.org) The chartered body for information technology professionals in the U.K., founded in 1957. slight more painful for the Trojans. But it's also the painkiller. We don't have to wait four weeks, until the Jan. 1 Rose Bowl and the Jan. 4 Sugar Bowl are over, to know which school is going to look better in the press. Look at the coverage since Sunday afternoon, when the BCS rankings and the bowl pairings were finalized See finalization. . Check the articles from the Associated Press and the pages of USA Today USA Today National U.S. daily general-interest newspaper, the first of its kind. Launched in 1982 by Allen Neuharth, head of the Gannett newspaper chain, it reached a circulation of one million within a year and surpassed two million in the 1990s. and The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times, major media outlets without local dogs in this fight. Did they greet the news by hailing the Sooners and Tigers as championship material and burying the Trojans in the bottom paragraphs? No, the Trojans were the story. Of the 28 articles since Sunday, 10 emphasized the BCS controversy in general. Eleven focused on the Trojans' plight, while only four led with Oklahoma and one with LSU. Of the 10 photographs in the same span, seven were of USC players or coaches, while only two were of LSU and one of Oklahoma. If there's anything America loves more than a winner, it's a hard-luck loser. Ask yourself which team from October 2003 is going to live longer in baseball legend and lore, the World Series champion Florida Marlins The Florida Marlins are a professional baseball team based in Miami Gardens, Florida. The Marlins are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League. From to the present, the Marlins have played in Dolphin Stadium. or the Chicago Cubs. Long after Brad Penny Bradley Wayne Penny[1] (born May 24, 1978 in Blackwell, Oklahoma)[2] is a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball for the Los Angeles Dodgers.[3] Early career and Ivan Rodriguez are forgotten, they'll be writing books about Moises Alou and Steve Bartman Steven D. Bartman (born 1977) [1] [2] is a resident of the Chicago area, who gained notoriety on the evening of October 14, 2003, for attempting a catch of a foul pop-up in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series between the Chicago Cubs and the . A month ago, after the Trojans took an all-too-tenuous hold on No. 2 in the BCS rankings, I wrote that if they won their final three regular-season games they'd earn a place in history one way or another, either as a BCS championship finalist or as an embarrassment for the BCS system. The second scenario was played out more dramatically than envisioned. The point is not that the Trojans should be satisfied with a share of a title. It's that they should be happy because their half of the title would be the bigger half. There would be no asterisk attached to the Trojans' AP championship. The only asterisks will be the ones implicitly attached to Oklahoma or LSU when the sportscasters report Jan. 5 that the Sugar Bowl winner has been crowned the national champion officially, but ... The Sooners or Tigers will have to live with the knowledge that they didn't have to play against the people's choice, that they won because of an arbitrary computer formula. While the Trojans will have the satisfaction of playing for something larger than themselves, of carrying the banner for the overthrow of the BCS. Now tell me who you'd rather be. Oklahoma and LSU, which have a chance to win the season's final game? Or USC, which has a chance to win the last laugh? |
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