A gigantic cardinal-and-gold elephant has hunkered down in the musty laboratory of the Bowl Championship Series. The pachyderm has claimed squatter’s rights and bragging rights, all kinds of rights, and is not going away any time soon.
The University of Southern California did the worst thing possible for the intricate but rather imperfect formula for producing a national football champion. It walloped a very good Michigan team to cast a huge shadow, a veritable eclipse, on the festivities in New Orleans on Sunday.
Allegedly, Oklahoma and Louisiana State University, the chosen two, are meeting for the national title on Sunday. But the pesky football writers, who vote in the Associated Press poll, had been picking USC as the best team in the land going into the bowl games, and nothing that happened on Thursday is likely to change their quirky and independent minds.
