re: USC - 2003 National Championship

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For the National Championship… following the National Championship game.

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Let’s say for the sake of argument that the computers were really enamored with the Big 10 that year and Oklahoma and Michigan ended up #1 and #2 ahead of USC and LSU. Do you really think the public would have accepted that as THE national championship game? The legitimacy of the BCS title game was entirely reliant on public sentiment of the participants. In most years there was sufficient public agreement for the winner of the game to be seen as the ONLY national champions. That wasn’t the case in 2003. There was only enough to support a co-championship.

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Like it or not, the majority of the public still ascribed legitimacy to the AP poll at the time and the majority of sources now ascribe legitimacy to USC’s claim as co-champs.

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I wouldn't call it a majority. People I've talked to beyond the SEC area never have ascribed USC as co-champs.

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wouldn't call it a majority. People I've talked to beyond the SEC area never have ascribed USC as co-champs.

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You are absolutely correct, it's an extreme minority, outside of the left coast, that give any credence to AP being relevant. Before 1998 is a different story.

Put it this way, your average early teen who was just starting to get into football and follow college football when the BCS was started, was probably born around 1985. That makes him around 38 years old now.

So outside of California, nobody younger than 38 gives any more relevance to the AP as they do with Vinny the butcher down on the corner of main street usa.

I happen to be older than 38, so I do remember the time the AP was relevant... and I remember the UPI too. Nobody gives a shite about either now.

BTW, vinny the butcher has OU as champs in 2003. So does that make it "Tri-Champs"? NOPE, because Vinny is an idiot just like the AP voters.

Sorry if people don't like facts.

Not to mention that just because a poll USED to be relevant, doesn't mean they will always be relevant. For many years the National Collegiate Foundation was the only entity that mattered. As time went on and a couple other groups got involved, the NCF died off. Then the groups that replaced the NCF in terms of relevancy died off and the AP and UPI came around. Eventually the UPI became irrelevant. Even the USA Today had their poll and was relevant to a lesser extent.

Bottom line, things change. They always have. So what might have been the case as with the AP being relevant, has changed ever since 1998... just like the dozen or so other polls giving championships since about 150 years ago.

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No they didn't, they told the BCS to stop using the AP poll in the formula without the AP's permission

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Yep. That’s withdrawing.

USC was UCF before UCF

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Not to mention that just because a poll USED to be relevant, doesn't mean they will always be relevant. For many years the National Collegiate Foundation was the only entity that mattered. As time went on and a couple other groups got involved, the NCF died off. Then the groups that replaced the NCF in terms of relevancy died off and the AP and UPI came around. Eventually the UPI became irrelevant. Even the USA Today had their poll and was relevant to a lesser extent.

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The NCF was a group founded in 1980 that went back and made retroactive selections for national champions prior to the creation of the AP poll. The Helms Athletic Foundation (1941) and College Football Researchers Association (1982) also made retroactive selections. None of the three were ever considered a legitimate authority contemporaneously. They are simply the only sources listed in the NCAA record book for the majority of the pre-1936 period, so there is at least some rationale for schools to use those sources to validate claims to titles before the AP came around. They didn’t lose relevance over time.

The UPI and USA Today are just two of the publishers for the Coaches’ Poll through the years. They too never lost relevance. They just stopped publishing/sponsoring the poll.

Any other polls/selectors who have come and gone through the years were never considered authoritative. The pattern you are painting of waning relevance does not exist in reality. I don’t disagree that in the CFP era that a true playoff has supplanted polls as the acknowledged source of the national championship, but only so long as they continue to include the top one or two teams in the polls in their field. If the committee were to go off the rails and leave out teams that are universally considered the top contenders, they would quickly lose credibility and the public would revert back to the polls. In the BCS era with only two teams selected there was more likelihood of a legitimate contender being left out and the public viewing the polls as at least as credible. That’s what happened in 2003 when #1 in both polls was left out of the BCS. Also in the BCS, the validity of the title still fell back on guaranteed selection as #1 in the Coaches’ Poll along with its Crystal Ball trophy.

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You continue to ignore the fact that the Conferences set up a Championship which all would agree to and abode by.

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They agreed to it determining the Coaches’ Poll champion. There was no agreement with the AP and no agreement by the conferences to decline the AP Trophy. It established the BCS champion as A national champion, not THE national champion. It was simply an extension of the Bowl Coalition that finally brought the Rose Bowl, Big 10 and PAC-10 into the fold. Notably it still relied upon the polls for validation. It did not seek to supplant them, simply to make it more likely that the polls would have a unanimous selection. They failed in that goal in 2003.