Plenty of Time Left, but USC, Texas Keep Ticking

No. 1 USC and No. 2 Texas mashed two more opponents while No. 3 Alabama, once the other unbeaten school with a dog in this hunt, bow-wowed out.

USC and UCLA don’t play for three weeks, and the Rose Bowl is still seven weeks away.

OK, so what now?

This might be a good time to break out the playing cards or clean the attic.

Barring a Rod Serling-type unforeseen event, USC and Texas are going to play for the national title Jan. 4 -- and all there is to do now -- tick, tick, tick -- is wait.

Pete Carroll may have done a silly thing by agreeing to play 8-1 Fresno State this week when he could have cherry-picked from Texas Tech’s nonconference schedule, but we think that mistake will mean only that USC starters will play into the fourth quarter instead of the third.

Meanwhile, the antagonists who pine for reform can dream only about what might have been.

One-loss Miami, Penn State and Louisiana State could have made this a controversy to rival last year’s USC-Oklahoma-Auburn fiasco, with the emphasis on could have.

Penn State lost to Michigan on a last-second touchdown, Miami botched a field-goal try against Florida State over Labor Day weekend, and LSU blew a huge halftime lead, at home, in its loss to Tennessee.

Miami, Penn State and LSU still will go to nice bowl games with the players probably receiving gift bags and watches, but otherwise we are left to occupy ourselves with games of BCS Scrabble.

News item: Auburn and Georgia combine for 61 points and 952 yards and Kentucky outlasts Vanderbilt, 48-43.

Reaction: Can’t anyone in the Southeastern Conference play defense?

OK, let’s get over this.

Announcers continue to rip the Pacific 10 Conference because its games tend to be thrill rides.

ABC analyst Craig James called Pac-10 defenses “inept” during a halftime rant after UCLA and Arizona State had combined for 56 points in two quarters (so what’s wrong with that?).

The argument about the Pac-10 and SEC has been going on for years, this idea that West Coast play is somehow less credible than the SEC because, in general, the offenses tend to outperform the defenses.

In the end, though, isn’t this all relative?

Both are fine, top-drawer conferences with different points of emphasis.

Since 2000, in fact, the Pac-10 boasts the best record in BCS bowl games, 6-1, and it hasn’t been a one-trick Trojan pony, as four schools have combined for the six: Washington, Oregon, Oregon State and USC.

The SEC is 5-1 in BCS games since 2000.

And, is it really that they don’t play defense in the Pac-10 or that the offenses in the conference just too good to stop?

In the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, Oregon State’s defense held Notre Dame to nine points. The next year, Oregon held Colorado to 16.

Iowa scored 17 on USC in the 2003 Orange Bowl and in the 2004 Rose Bowl, Michigan managed only 14 against the Trojans.

In last year’s national-title game, Oklahoma fell one point short of 20 against USC.

Conversely, SEC offenses fare OK outside of the conference. LSU had 47 against Illinois in the 2002 Sugar Bowl, and Florida scored 56 against Maryland in that year’s Orange Bowl.

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Weekend Wrap

It’s too soon to say whether Urban Meyer took the wrong job last year and whether Steve Spurrier took the right one, but it sure looks that way after Saturday.

Spurrier punted the Florida position to Meyer and went to fixer-upper South Carolina, and Meyer spurned Notre Dame for Florida because he probably thought Florida could get back to the top quicker.

Oh really?

Notre Dame, under first-year Coach Charlie Weis, is two wins from a probable BCS bowl berth and Meyer has to explain away a three-loss, non-BCS bowl season.

Florida and South Carolina are both 7-3, true, but the records couldn’t be more different.

See, Spurrier beat Meyer to get to his 7-3, and Meyer lost to Spurrier to get to his.

The last thing the world needs is another rankings system, but that hasn’t stopped University of Michigan researchers from developing a “easier, faster” model.

First, remember that Michigan is in the Big Ten and then consider the top five teams according to the Michigan method entering last weekend were Penn State, Texas, USC, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Go figure.

The pool of BCS at-large potentials thinned out a bit when Texas Tech suffered its second loss of the season. Let’s be clear: Texas Tech is a fun team with a potent offense, but the Red Raiders were never as good as their No. 12 BCS ranking. The Red Raiders’ gaudy offensive numbers were inflated by a 199-point nonconference barrage against Florida International, Indiana State and Sam Houston State. Texas Tech, averaging 545 yards a game, was held to 338 in a 24-17 loss to Oklahoma State. The Red Raiders, No. 3 nationally in scoring average at 47 points a game, were held to a total of 34 in their two losses to Texas and Oklahoma State.

Good going, sort of: Florida State has lost three Atlantic Coast Conference games for the first time since joining the league, but that’s still good enough to clinch the Atlantic Division and earn a berth in the ACC title game.

Kudos to Syracuse for retiring uniform No. 44, worn by several stars including Jim Brown, on a day when the school apparently retired its offense in a 27-0 loss to South Florida.

The answer to the question, “When was the last time Florida and Florida State lost on the same day in the state of South Carolina” is “never.”