Thursday, January 05, 2006

Heisman in two hands - worth one Bush?

Someone asked me today how I felt about the national championship game last night featuring USC vs. Texas. "Good for Texas," I said, "But now we'll have to listen to all the Texas fans for a while."

I think you know what I mean... the incessant braggadochios and their chest-beating. It just gets kinda old - I mean, I have lived in Texas long enough to hear that ad nauseum from Cowboys fans.

Beyond that, though, I'm glad. It was good to finally see the two undefeated teams go head-to-head so that we wouldn't have weeks and weeks of speculation about which team was really better and did the sports writers of America really get the rankings right.

This game was great - no doubt about it. It featured high scoring, a lead that changed several times and a game-winning play in the final minute from a fourth-and-short-yardage situation. Did I mention the game featured three Heisman Trophy finalists (USC QB Matt Leinart, USC RB Reggie Bush, UT QB Vince Young), two actual Heisman winners (Leinart and Bush) and a seemingly home field advantage for USC?

After USC lost the game, Leinart was quoted as saying that he basically thought USC still had a better team, but that Texas just made more plays in the game. Uh, that's kinda like saying, my car's faster, I just didn't beat you in the race. The whole point of the teams playing is to determine which team is better. Hence the buildup of this game as a true Bowl Championship Series title game.

Yes, you can talk about the Any Given Sunday corollary which states that on any given day, one football team can beat another if things go just right. Everyone can have a bad day and unfortunate circumstances to lose to a team they shouldn't have lost to. In this case, that excuse doesn't fly. There was too much on the line.

Now, USC has a legitimate gripe about a play where Texas scored when the ball should have been down. The play wasn't reviewed on instant replay when it should have and wasn't reversed. So some could say that Texas might never have won if that had been called back. But it wasn't called back so it's only conjecture at this point. Maybe they would have just been more resolved to score and it wouldn't have been as close as it was. We'll never know and we can't go back.

Regardless, UT overcame the public perception that No. 1 USC was a better team than the No. 2 Longhorns despite matching undefeated records. They had to play in the Rose Bowl, which is in USC's back yard. Texas' Heisman finalist had to face USC's two Heisman winners. On paper, so many people had USC picked to win that playing the game seemed a formality.

But somewhere along the line, Vince Young put it on them. And that's kinda cool.

1 comment:

LDiablo said...

Never let a seemingly clever headline get in the way with accuracy. I notice on re-reading that headline on this entry that the real contrast was in USC's two Heisman winners, Leinart and Bush, with that of UT's finalist, Vince Young. So the whole device mimicing the old 'a bird in hand is better than two in the Bush' really doesn't work when the Bush should be Young. Ohwellll...shithappens.