Despite the embarrassing upset, Oklahoma held strong with the BCS computer algorithms and retained its No. 1 ranking, getting the title game bid over USC, which topped both the Associated Press and Coaches’ polls.
“The BCS system is what it is,” USC coach Pete Carroll said at the time, “but obviously there’s some kind of problem because the No. 1 team in the country isn’t playing in that game.”
Turns out, Carroll and the voters knew a good bit more than the computers did, with USC toppling Michigan in the Rose Bowl and Oklahoma falling again, 21-14 to LSU in the Sugar Bowl. The Tigers won the BCS title and the coaches’ poll, and USC exported the AP crown.
1936: Minnesota, Pitt or … Slippery Rock?
The AP Poll has become one of the pillars of college football rankings, standing side by side with the coaches’ poll in many newspapers and websites, but that wasn’t always the case.
In fact, the first championship the AP awarded to Minnesota in 1936 wasn’t even unanimous. UPI – another news gathering service – instead ranked Pitt as No. 1. And the stats-based Boand and Duke Houlgate systems would back that assessment, bolstering the Panthers’ argument for the seventh of its nine championships. Even a look at the final AP poll favors that conclusion: Whereas Minnesota (7-1) beat two ranked teams, Pitt (8-1-1) beat three, including a 21-0 rout of Washington in the Rose Bowl.
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