Auburn Is Worthy of Top Ranking

Thank you, Auburn. You did your part.

Sorry that you won’t have anything but a homemade banner to honor your accomplishment, but your sacrifice will be remembered one day when this BCS system comes toppling down like Sauron’s tower at the end of “The Lord of the Rings.”

The Tigers exposed the BCS for all of its fraudulence by completing an undefeated season with a 16-13 victory over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl on Monday, and now they might as well be Fresno State or Wyoming, sitting outside the home of the NCAA’s Division I-A football “championship” game at the Orange Bowl.

“It’s going to be very stressful for me to watch it, just knowing that we should be there,” Auburn running back Carnell Williams said.

A team emerges from the vaunted Southeastern Conference with a perfect record and doesn’t get a piece of No. 1? That’ll have ‘em grabbing the torches and pitchforks in football country.

“I can’t speak for the SEC, because our people haven’t sat down yet,” SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said. “But from my perspective, an undefeated Southeastern Conference champion should be playing in the mix for the national championship.”

The Tigers, No. 3 in both polls and the BCS rankings, tried to talk their way to a title, hoping that a big victory and an upset by No. 2 Oklahoma over top-ranked USC in the Orange Bowl would persuade the media to vote them No. 1 in the Associated Press poll.

“There are two national-championship games: the one here in the Sugar Bowl and the one in the Orange Bowl,” Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville insisted on the eve of the game. “This is a mythical national championship game that they’ll play Tuesday night. We feel that this is the championship game being played [Monday] night.”

So the Tigers were taking on the voters and the system in addition to the ninth-ranked team in the country. It might have been too much pressure, not enough focus.

The result was a far-from-perfect effort that included two turnovers and an inability to deliver finishing blows.

Auburn had first and goal on two drives, had a third down inside the Virginia Tech 10 on another, but couldn’t score a touchdown in the first half.

Fortunately for the Tigers, Virginia Tech was just as inefficient.

The Hokies had a fourth-down pass bounce off their fullback’s chest in the end zone, they missed a field goal and they threw an incompletion on the two-point conversion after their first touchdown.

No, the Tigers didn’t win very impressively. They shouldn’t have to.

If we applied that approach to the NFL, the Indianapolis Colts win their games more spectacularly than the New England Patriots win theirs, so the Colts deserve to be Super Bowl champs. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?

The Tigers focused on the clock more than the scoreboard in the fourth quarter, getting conservative to preserve the victory rather than chasing points.

“If you’ve got to win by style points, we need to throw out all these systems and not worry about national championships, because it’s about winning a game,” Tuberville said.

Here’s Auburn’s argument. The defense gave up the fewest points per game in the country. The rushing combination of Williams and Ronnie Brown propelled the Tigers to an average of 189 yards rushing per game. Quarterback Jason Campbell makes enough plays for his team to win, and finished third in the country in passing efficiency.

And, oh yeah, the Tigers won all their games.

So they let Virginia Tech hang around them most of the night? Well, USC trailed Virginia Tech late in the third quarter before coming back for a 24-13 victory on Aug. 28.

And the Hokies have a pretty good defense themselves. They were third in the nation in points given up.

So go ahead, Auburn, call yourselves the national champs. Print the shirts and caps. Same for you, Utah. You want some too, Texas? Sure, why not.

It’s all make-believe anyway in college football, so let any and all aspirants claim their title.

“Somebody’s will pick us,” Tuberville said. “I’ve got a subscription to Golf Digest. I’m going to call them and ask them if they’ll vote us No. 1. It means as much as the other ones. I’m telling you, when you go 13-0, you should be national champion.”

They even took their case to the cameras, rushing to the ESPN stage after the game to say, as Campbell admitted later, “Push us to be national champions.”

Their fans joined in, chanting “We’re No. 1.”

Later, the fans settled for something not open for debate: “Un-de-fea-ted.”

And yet, unrewarded.

Remember Auburn.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/adande.