[DeltAlum]

Here is a column from "The Rocky Mountain News" on 1/4/02. Sometimes I don't agree with this guy, but I think his comment (as I mentioned in an earlier post about this being one of the best college football games ever are absolutley right on...

Lincicome: All BCS games will be compared to this
January 4, 2003

TEMPE, Ariz. - Game of the century, man. This century, the last one and the next one, too.

No college championship game, so-called or BCS certified, can match this one - not for final drama, not for raw nerve and rare delight, not for failings and flaws as well as special feats.

However college football decides to sort itself out in the future, this is the finish to measure by, double overtime, seat-squirming, breath- holding, unambiguous, last moment suspense.

The numbers will forever be Ohio State 31, Miami 24, much of that coming with no time on the clock, in that overtime twilight that only college football allows. And that Miami can make the case that it was robbed by a field judge's misjudgment, adds yet more texture to the final mix.

"That's what a national championship football game should look like, double overtime," Ohio State coach Jim Tressel said.

Whatever might happen in the next BCS, they will be pushed to do better than what happened on a desert night in Arizona, a game forever to be stored in clarity and wonder, a game forever defined by fourth-down heroics, all standards for time past and time to come.

"That was the best football game I've ever seen," said Miami defensive tackle Matt Walters, who had an inside view.

No argument here. None is likely ever to come from across a nation that finally found a football game on each side of the halftime show.

The fifth BCS outing got it right, raising the bar to the exaggeration that fuels it, and it took two teams of great tradition and reputation to do: It took a Miami team unbeaten to beat itself, an Ohio State team to find its nerve and the help of field judge Terry Porter on a play that sent Miami dancing onto the field with what it believed was its sixth national title.

The play that will linger most for both sides is not Maurice Clarett's winning touchdown or Ken Dorsey's final futile fourth down fling of the football that clattered without reward into the end zone: The play will be a fourth down pass clanking off Ohio State's Chris Gamble just before Miami defender Glenn Sharpe wrapped his arms around him, perfectly legal, perfectly played. Game over.

An eternity of seconds later, Porter tossed his yellow denial onto the field, giving Ohio State all the life it would need, the worst call since Pig Sooey. The happy and rejoicing Hurricanes were ushered back off the field, rather like the U.S. basketballers against Russia in Munich.

"I didn't see the call," said Miami coach Larry Coker, who lost his first game as a head coach. "The call was made, that's what you deal with. You would like it to be a legitimate call."

This one will be argued and reargued for that play, others will argue the play that took Miami's Willis McGahee out of the game, any of the five Miami turnovers, three by Dorsey, and two of which gave Ohio State only 31 yards to get 14 points.

"They didn't beat us, we beat ourselves," Miami's Kellen Winslow Jr said.

If this is the kind of bitterness that settles upon the loser of a national title game, it is just another reason to abandon this whole BCS formula, with its rankings and quartiles and rotating big-bowl carnival.

College football clearly is copying the Super Bowl formula; setting the final game apart from the traditional bowls, already tardy on New Year's Day, encouraging even the college players to preen and pose or become louts in search of attention.

Bowl games should be rewards for a season of success, not life defining or character changing ordeals. The bigger the end of things gets, the less vital are the beginnings.

None of the 27 other sanctioned bowl games were sell-outs, including the Rose Bowl. Attention is paid only by a team's local media. Once-pedigreed affairs such as the Orange or Cotton bowls are now merely excuses to have a New Year's parade. Ratings are down, sponsorships last only as long the marketing manager keeps his job.

Would a more inclusive playoff change any of this? College football not only has to decide if it wants a true football tournament, with eight or even 16 teams, but how to keep the ever-more pointless bowls from vanishing altogether.

So far, the BCS has done what it was designed to do, give ABC-TV the last game of the season between the Nos. 1 and 2 college football teams.

There is much more money to be made by college football. Old allegiances will give way eventually to a true tournament and the college football season will fade into insignificance, just as every other season in every other sport has.

But none will top this.

Personal Note: You've seen in the post before this one, that I think "the call" might have been correct. It's important to remember that the reporters and columnists all see the same replays in the press box that we see at home. No more, no less. And I think the replay was cued to the wrong spot. Whatever. It's over.

I do agree with one thing -- What a great game!