re: Why is Media So Insistent That USC Won 2003 Championship

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MikeTheTiger71

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Why is Media So Insistent That USC Won 2003 Championship

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We differ in that my belief is the media should report news

Control of the polling process should be reported by the media not created by the media. By voting for USC they created news, they sold papers and made money. The AP took a negative hit for what they did in 2003

Yes the AP favored USC and did not support the BCS process which was developed to prevent split championships.

The conferences and schools agreed to participate and agree to follow the BCS process and 3 coaches did not and the AP never agreed to support the process.

By not playing a conference championship game, USC was victim to strength of schedule drop and missed out of the title game.

Regardless LSU is the 2003 BCS champion
Reporting news is ok but news creating news is not ok

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Control of the polling process should be reported by the media not created by the media. By voting for USC they created news, they sold papers and made money. The AP took a negative hit for what they did in 2003

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I find myself in the odd position of “defending” the polls in this thread. Though I haven’t been on this site for that long, I have always been a very vocal critic of polls and their “logic”. My position here isn’t that the AP poll got it right or even that their reasons for choosing USC were justified. It’s that how they wound up selecting USC #1 was not some grand conspiracy or unique set of circumstances. They did what they always had done. It wasn’t a statement or a power play. LSU lost after USC so they were ranked lower. That’s it. That’s how USC ended up #1 in the AP. It’s stupid, but it’s standard poll “logic”.

As to creating news, I agree with the other poster that expressing opinions is part of their job. The AP poll was their collective opinion. You are absolutely entitled to conclude that their opinion was flawed. I agree. You can rightly argue that polls are not a reasonable way to determine champions. My issues here are twofold. One, the public had always granted authority to the AP poll’s opinion and that was still true in 2003. You can’t change the weight given to it by disagreeing. Two, even though the BCS was an attempt to determine the champion in a better way, it failed in 2003. The team many believed was the best team that year was not given a chance to prove it on the field. LSU’s BCS title did NOT settle the issue as a result. The BCS was developed to reduce the chance of a split title. The way it was constructed it could not PREVENT it.