BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME ANALYSIS
Where to begin after a confounding, cluttered, clamorous, controversial, crowning confrontation that wasn’t decided until the very last play? When a game this big is shrouded in several shades of gray, the layers of reality need to be peeled back, one by one. Certain statements in one area of analysis or endeavor should not be viewed as spilling over into other topics. With that short preamble out of the way, let’s dissect the 2011 BCS National Championship Game:
The first thing that needs to be said is that in a bottom-line assessment of the superior team, Auburn deserved such a distinction more than Oregon. Sure, the margin was close, but the Tigers carried the play for most of the night. Moreover, even though the Big Ten replay booth clearly blew the late run on the part of Auburn running back Michael Dyer, it also needs to be said that Auburn drove the ball the length of the field and lent at least some legitimacy to its winning tally. It’s also worth noting that Auburn was able to beat Oregon and that vaunted Chip Kelly spread option attack despite a less-than-imposing performance from Heisman Trophy winner Cameron Newton. An extensive survey of this 60-minute mind-bender indicates that Auburn accomplished more of what it set out to do. Auburn stuffed Oregon twice inside the 3, surrendering only three points instead of 14. That alone speaks volumes about the immensity of the Tigers’ effort. They fought like champions.
The second thing that needs to be said is that while the SEC earned another win in the BCS title game, the Pac-10 – finally given a chance to compete with the SEC in a BCS bowl game – didn’t back down. It’s not a knock against Auburn or the SEC, ladies and gentlemen; it’s simply a recognition of the fact – and it is a fact – that on a night when Oregon’s calling card struggled so profoundly, the Ducks still stayed in the ring, traded punches, and made Auburn take a full 60 minutes to land the decisive blow. As Auburn continued to stuff Oregon’s spread option in the second half – drive after drive after drive – the majority opinion was that the Tigers and Mr. Newton were on the verge of blowing the game wide open. It was just about to happen here, it was just about to happen there, it was just about to happen everywhere. Newton stood on the precipice of a kill shot. The Tigers and their bigger, beefier front lines were this close to registering a knockout punch.
Only they didn’t.
If you had told Chip Kelly before kickoff that his defense would allow 20 points, he’d have taken that scenario in a heartbeat. Yes, the Pac-10 was not as deep this season as it has been in the past, but emerging from this bowl season, it’s quite clear that both Oregon and Stanford could carry their lunch pail with the best of them. The Ducks and the Cardinal were both anything but soft. Yes, Oregon made a bunch of mental errors, but UO’s defense never folded the tent despite ample opportunities to do so.
This razor-close game between the Pac-10 and the SEC, in the first BCS bowl between the two conferences (in 57 total games over the past 13 years), only magnifies the great unanswered question of college football over the past decade: What if USC had been able to play LSU (2003 and 2007), Auburn (2004), and Florida (2006, 2008) in BCS bowls and/or plus-one-type settings? It’s a crime – a small one, but a crime nevertheless for the diehard college football fan – that USC never got to test itself against the best teams from the best conference in the country. It’s a shame, too, that Auburn and Stanford never got to play. Ditto for LSU and Oregon, Arkansas and Stanford, or Alabama and Oregon. Any upper-tier bowl that either has an expiring contract or a tenuous contract should negotiate to put a top-three SEC team against a top-three Pac-10 team on the field. Bowl tie-ins are bad on a general level, but if there’s one conference matchup the nation needs to see on a more regular basis, it’s clear: The SEC and Pac-10 need to put their best teams against each other.
A third important point is that this result evens the historical record and compensates for past injustices done to Auburn. The Tigers and their fans deserve their moment of victory; one should be particularly cognizant of the past 30 years of college football history, in which the Tigers got shafted at the end of two separate seasons, not just one. Teenagers and early twenty-somethings are aware of Auburn’s unjust fate after the 2004 campaign. However, older college football fans and observers also remember that Auburn was jobbed in the 1983 season as well. The Miami Hurricanes, in the old “poll and bowl” system, climbed from the bottom of the top five past No. 3 Auburn and into the No. 1 spot following their 1984 Orange Bowl win over Nebraska. Auburn, at No. 3, beat Michigan in the Sugar Bowl but got leapfrogged. At the very least, Auburn should have shared the 1983 national title with the conqueror of Nebraska. Miami, after all, did get to play the Huskers on its home field in South Florida. It’s too cheap and convenient to say that this championship makes up for both 1983 and 2004, but one can say that it evens the scales rather than making them even more imbalanced.
Issue number four: mental mistakes – they acquire such profound importance in national championship games, which is why the Weekly Affirmation has always frowned upon overly specific and layered pregame analysis of these kinds of contests. Yes, the truth of the following statement is obvious, but if the obvious truth is still the biggest and most important truth, it needs to be put front and center: The biggest key to each and every BCS national title game is the ability to avoid major mental errors. Avoiding a Mark Bradley muffed punt, or a Reggie Bush lateral, or a Brian Robiskie dropped touchdown pass is the highest priority for the teams who dive into a pool of raging hormones and overflowing adrenaline. The pent-up excitement surrounding the BCS championship game – which builds over more than five weeks and is cranked to unholy levels by the mass-media Wurlitzer – generates such intense emotions that it’s hard for title-game participants to play polished and precise football out of the gate.
Florida produced the last complete performance by one team in a BCS title game when it demolished Ohio State in January of 2007. The last great half of a BCS championship showcase was the second half of the 2006 Rose Bowl. These games rarely match the hype; they rarely witness peak execution by the competing offenses. Teams that avoid the bigger mistakes in the more meaningful moments are the teams that win. Auburn made plenty of gaffes and goofs on Monday night, but Oregon’s miscues were magnified even more.
Sure, Cam Newton overthrew wide-open receivers on post patterns. Yes, Newton’s late fumble enabled Oregon to tie the game at 19-all. Undoubtedly, Auburn receivers dropped a number of balls while coach Gene Chizik’s defense committed multiple personal foul penalties. Yet, for all the ways in which Auburn impeded its own progress, Oregon engaged in a greater act of sustained self-sabotage. Darron Thomas failed to run for a first down on the second play from scrimmage, and after that body-snatched episode, he continued to make baffling decisions that killed his team. Thomas failed to make the proper read near the goal line on Oregon’s first foray inside the Auburn 3. Thomas should have handed off to LaMichael James but instead kept the ball and ate a seven-yard loss thanks to Nick Fairley, AU’s team MVP for the night. Thomas later wasted a timeout in the final minutes of regulation… a timeout that would have enabled Oregon to perhaps get the ball back with 45 seconds left instead of seeing Auburn drain the clock to the very end of the fourth quarter.
Aside from Thomas, Oregon’s illegal-motion penalty – which negated a nine-yard gain on a shovel pass right after the Ducks stopped Auburn on the 1 – arguably served as the game’s most influential turning point in the latter stages of the second quarter. Auburn had just taken 16 plays to march down the field. Oregon, at that precise moment, needed to hold onto the ball and keep its defense fresh. When the illegal-motion penalty pinned UO inside its own 1 and denied the Ducks a second-and-one situation, Auburn’s defense pounced on a chance to register a safety. After that sequence, the Tigers controlled the line of scrimmage and displayed more stamina than their Pac-10 opponent. Oregon’s illegal-motion penalty reminds us that all five-yard penalties are not created equal. Some mistakes are more significant and consequential than others, and Oregon made the kinds of mistakes that were harder to withstand. It’s hardly surprising that those blunders were more mental than physical.
BCS championship pressure forced a lot of mistakes from both sides, but Oregon displayed even more unsteadiness between the ears.
As this overview of the 2011 BCS National Championship Game continues, a thorough and accurate account of the night’s events in Glendale would not be complete without riffs on the officiating and the college football rulebook, a sorry text that needs to be radically revised in the coming months. First, a word about the officiating.
There’s a reason why it’s important for college football writers to watch the non-championship BCS bowls: By keeping tabs on the sport, one can be exposed to small but telling details that crop up in the heat of battle. In the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4, an Ohio State runner was pronounced down because his wrist hit the ground. The rule, mind you, is a bad rule, but it was a rule nevertheless: An open palm, by itself, does not produce a dead ball. However, when the wrist (the beginning of the arm) touches the turf, we learned in the Sugar Bowl – if we didn’t know it already – that a ballcarrier is down. Precisely because the memory of the Sugar Bowl was fresh, there was no question – NONE WHATSOEVER! – that Auburn’s Michael Dyer was down (his wrist, not his knee, was the salient body part) near midfield on his bizarre but game-changing run in the final minutes of regulation time. It is a scandal – nothing less – that the replay booth did not overturn the ruling on the field (namely, that Dyer was never down).
Auburn did deserve a win more than Oregon did, but on an even more fundamental and granular level, it can also be said that the Ducks were deprived of an honest chance to prevent the Tigers from getting into field goal range. At the very least, Oregon was denied an opportunity to make Auburn kick a long and appreciably challenging field goal. The officiating in this game was a disgrace, and it helped decide the game instead of the young men who spilled their guts on the low-quality grass of University of Phoenix Stadium.
Next, about the rulebook: One more time, the FBS college football rulebook reminded us why it needs to be changed before the start of the 2011 season. If you’ve been reading along throughout the bowl season, you’ve seen several rules that, as currently written, either reward deficient football or punish good play. The latest entry? Try the principles of the rulebook that led to an incomplete-pass ruling on Cliff Harris’s first-quarter “non-interception” of Cameron Newton. The rules, with their emphasis on the “process of a catch,” forced the officials and the replay reviewer to conclude that Harris did not adequately possess the ball all the way through his tumble to the ground. Never mind the fact that Harris’s hands were fully wrapped around the pigskin for the entire play; because the ball moved around in Harris’s hands, the rulebook said, “incomplete.” In real football, Cliff Harris or anyone else who made a play like that should be credited with an interception. The football rulebook said otherwise. The football rules committee has to revise that interpretation and several other sections of the laws governing this sport on the field. The act of making a legal catch has been hyper-legislated to the point of absurdity. Simplify what it means to make a legal catch – PLEASE?!
Last but certainly not least, I don’t have an Associated Press ballot. If I did, though, the only ethical and responsible thing to do, since we don’t have a plus-one on Saturday, Jan. 22 at 8:15 p.m. ET in the Rose Bowl, would be to split said ballot between Auburn and TCU. Last year, my “ballot” split the title between Boise State and Alabama. In 2009, my would-be ballot was split between Florida and Utah. It’s a crying shame that TCU and Auburn won’t get to meet. College football is a beautiful, captivating and endlessly rich sport to chronicle. It’s too bad that this special part of American culture cannot crown an honest and undisputed national champion.
Congratulations again to the Auburn Tigers and their fans. Just be sure to throw in a pat on the back to the gallant yet beaten Oregon Ducks. Also don’t forget to salute the co-national champion TCU Horned Frogs.
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