BCS Matchups Are Problem, Not Bias

If there is a bias here, it leans toward great college football bowl games and against watching Miami stomp all over a ground-bound team in a game that is supposed to decide which team is best in the country but only proves that teams that never see good passers can’t stop good passers in the national title game.

If there is a bias here, it leans toward nudging voters in football polls to answer honestly the question, “Who is the best team in the country this week? And who is second best, third best, fourth best, this week?

USC dominated Notre Dame after dominating UCLA after dominating Arizona State. All three of those opponents will be playing in bowl games. USC will play in a bowl game too, and the bias here is that USC ends up where it deserves to play and, more important, where college football fans deserve to see it play. And that doesn’t mean only Ohio State fans or Iowa fans or Georgia fans or Notre Dame fans.

It seems as if, right now, today, Dec. 2, that USC is playing football as well as or better than any team in the country. This isn’t to excuse USC’s two losses but to notice that from those losses USC got stronger.

And according to BCS-ologists, there’s a good chance the bowl championship series rankings will move USC into the No. 4 spot, ahead of Iowa. If this holds for another week, USC would have a guaranteed BCS bowl berth.

But the bias here is to see the best football teams challenged by the best. Watching Ken Dorsey test USC’s defense at the same time Carson Palmer is testing the Miami defense, that’s a challenge.

Seeing whether the Hawkeye pass defense is for real and can stop Palmer and his receivers -- Mike Williams, Kareem Kelly, Keary Colbert, Alex Holmes, Malaefou MacKenzie, etc. -- that’s intriguing.

Finding out how USC and Georgia stack up. Against each other. Head to head. That’s interesting. Not so thrilling is USC getting stuck playing four-loss Florida State.

Is that bias?

“After this game,” USC senior cornerback Darrell Rideaux said after the Notre Dame game Saturday, “I would hope we’d be judged fairly. I hope people who saw us play this game will think about what they saw.”

There’s a fair request.

What they saw Saturday was different from what they saw two months ago. What they saw was a team that understands itself, is not bothered by trouble or stymied by mistakes or discombobulated by freak plays or “Irish magic.”

Not that there’s a great deal of stock to be put in Internet fan message boards, but they can provide a clue to the fans’ temperature. A week ago there was much boasting by Iowa faithful about how they’d love to see USC in the Rose Bowl, if only to shut up anybody who suggested USC might be the better team.

This week there’s hedging. “USC might be the worst matchup for us,” Hawkeye fans are saying. Clearly they have been paying attention. “We might not match up against USC’s receivers so well,” they’re saying. “Florida State, Miami, Ohio State, Georgia, Notre Dame, USC, that’s the order I like the matchups,” one adds. “USC might be tough for us.”

Is it bias to think it wouldn’t be so much fun to watch Ohio State find out it’s not going to beat Miami 14-9 or 10-7 and then figure out it can’t score any more points while the Hurricanes are putting up 30 because Miami throws the ball and, boy, that’s not fair because nobody else the Buckeyes played in the Big Ten did that?

Is it bias to not want to listen to men wearing Orange coats stammer and trip over themselves as they explain how Notre Dame is their choice to play in Miami rather than USC or Iowa because, well, hey, just because?

“I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished,” MacKenzie said, “and whatever happens with the bowls won’t take away from how USC is going back in the right direction.

“But if we don’t get into a BCS bowl, we won’t have the opportunity for a lot of people to see this team play. I think people who haven’t seen us play would enjoy that. And we won’t get to challenge ourselves one more time against a really good team.”

Hoping USC gets to play Iowa or Georgia or even Ohio State, if enough weird things happen, is not bias. It’s no different from being pleased when the Angels made it to the baseball playoffs despite their bad start because the Angels of October were much better than the Angels of April. Missing the Angels of October challenge the Yankees, the Twins and the Giants would have taken away from the World Series.

Where USC’s season goes from here is no longer up to the Trojans. It’s also up to UCLA. If the Bruins beat Washington State on Saturday, the Trojans get the Rose Bowl berth and maybe a chance to prove themselves one more time against an Iowa team that can throw and run the ball, just like USC, in what would become the most attractive of the BCS bowl games.

This Washington State game should mean something to UCLA too. Its coach, Bob Toledo, has little credibility left among Bruin supporters and it should make a difference to the players, having an 8-4 record and finishing third in the Pac-10, rather than 7-5. The future seems brighter for teams that don’t quit.

Or maybe it’s up to Georgia and Miami. If both of them lose, USC might sneak into the Fiesta Bowl and have a chance to play for the national championship.

The Trojans have done their best to prove they deserve a chance to show one more time they are one of the best. No bias there, just the truth.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.