SUGAR BOWL 'That other game' overshadows BCS
A Rose Bowl victory by USC on Jan. 1 would devalue the Oklahoma-LSU game.
By CHRIS DUFRESNE
LOS ANGELES TIMES
NEW ORLEANS --The itinerary is set, the tickets are beyond sold and they're about ready to roll out the barrels (of rum), yet no one can say for sure yet whether Jan. 4 will involve football or farce ball.
The Sugar Bowl waited four years to take its turn at hosting the "national championship game," but, in fact, it could be hosting something less than that.
Because of fallout from this year's bowl championship series fiasco, the Sugar Bowl won't know what it is has on Jan. 4 until the Rose Bowl is played Jan. 1.
"I certainly did not want my BCS national championship game to be overshadowed by the Rose Bowl," Sugar Bowl executive director Paul Hoolahan said last week in his second-floor Superdome office.
Unfortunately, until further notice, Hoolahan's signature song is "Me and My Shadow."
The bowl championship series ostensibly was cooked up to prevent football faux pas, but as ointment it has mostly worked like snake oil.
Disputed results
Six years ago, in an effort to pair the nation's top two teams, college football powerbrokers designed a rankings system based on polls, computers, schedule strength and, many would say, hooey.
This season, in a fateful fit, the BCS computers gurgled and churned and spit out the preposterous.
USC ended up No. 1 in both the writers and coaches' polls but finished third in the BCS standings.
Thus, No. 1 USC will play No. 4 Michigan in the Rose Bowl while Oklahoma and Louisiana State, the top teams only in the BCS standings, will meet in the Sugar Bowl.
Many national college football pundits who were headed to New Orleans after Christmas for a week's worth of Sugar Bowl chronicling have been re-routed to Los Angeles to chronicle the Rose Bowl.
Even "ESPN GameDay," which crosses the Rocky Mountains every millennium or so, will retrace Lewis and Clark's famous trek and pitch production tents in Pasadena before turning wagon wheels toward the Bayou.
Late arrival
Many of the national scribes won't arrive in New Orleans until Jan. 2, only 48 hours before Sugar Bowl kickoff.
Why?
If USC wins the Rose Bowl it probably will be crowned Associated Press national champions while the Sugar Bowl gets boiled down to a murky vat of syrupy goo.
In a sense, the Rose Bowl becomes the national title game until proven otherwise.
The voting coaches have agreed to award the Sugar Bowl winner their national-title trophy despite the fact 37 of 63 coaches cast first-place votes for USC in the last USA Today/ESPN coaches' poll.
"What's the upside?" Hoolahan pondered of his predicament. "Maybe I save some budget. I was planning on feeding and entertaining the masses of media, having all sorts of events for them that will obviously shrink in size now or disappear."
Michigan
Mark Blaudschun, national college football writer for The Boston Globe and former president of the Football Writers Association of America, says the Sugar Bowl is only a true national-title game if Michigan upsets USC in the Rose Bowl.
"Obviously, if Michigan wins, it becomes what it's supposed to be," Blaudschun said of the BCS national-title game. "If USC wins, though, it's a curiosity. They can call the Sugar Bowl what they want, but if USC wins, they're the national champions."
Blaudschun says a convincing USC victory basically invalidates the coaches' decision to award the Sugar Bowl winner their trophy.
He acknowledges this may not be fair to the Oklahoma-LSU winner, but adds, "that's the way it is. If your No. 1 is not here, sorry, it's not the national championship. Call it the Congeniality Award."
Other than a Michigan victory, Blaudschun says the Sugar Bowl's best hope is USC scoring an ugly win over Michigan and either Oklahoma or LSU winning in a rout.
Hoolahan, not surprisingly, is trying to put the best spin possible on his game.
Truthfully, there are parallel story angles working in New Orleans: an outside angle and an inside one.
Pregame promotion
The outside perspective has the Sugar Bowl getting lumped into a BCS controversy it had nothing to do with while it loses a week's worth of pregame promotion to the Rose Bowl.
"The system was never intended to be foolproof or perfect, but it was the system we bought into," Hoolahan said. "I'm not going to be the one to run away from it and criticize it. I'm part of it. I happen to be the focal point of it this year."
The inside perspective finds Hoolahan having to fend off questions about the credibility of his bowl should USC score a convincing victory against Michigan.
"The game is what it is," Hoolahan said. "It's the BCS national championship game. It's not the mythical national championship and it's not the playoff national championship, it's the BCS national championship. We all know what it is."
The inside perspective, however, is rosier than, well, this year's Rose Bowl.
LSU invasion coming
Despite the controversy surrounding the Sugar Bowl, Hoolahan holds an important economic trump card -- he has LSU in the game.