The Rome Report

After months of college football, I have the same question that I had before the season started: Who is the best team in the country? Fans of the Florida Gators will say they are and they have a 24-14 victory over the Oklahoma Sooners in the SCS title game to prove it. Fans of Southern Cal, Texas and Utah will argue their team is the best team in the country and they have strong arguments.

Southern Cal’s fans argue that the Trojans were playing the best football at the end of the regular season. Their defense was dominating their opponents and the offense was heating up. Southern Cal’s only loss was its Pac-10 opener at Oregon State. After that loss, the Trojans ran the table. They earned a trip to the Rose Bowl and smacked around the Penn State Nittany Lions, the Big Ten Champions.

Texas’ fans would argue that their team should have been in the title game to begin with. After all, they did beat the Sooners, 45-35 earlier this season. Despite the win over the Sooners, the Longhorns were left out of the Big 12 title game in favor of Oklahoma. Many people, myself included, did not think that the Sooners deserved the nod over the Longhorns. Longhorn fans would also argue that Texas had the best loss out of the one-loss teams. Texas lost on the final play at Texas Tech, the seventh-ranked team in the country at the time.

Utah fans would argue that their Utes didn’t lose one game this season. The Utes went 13-0 and won the Mountain West Conference, a conference that many people argued was better from top-to-bottom than the Atlantic Coast and Big Ten conferences. The Utes also beat Alabama and the Crimson Tide was ranked number one in the country for a good portion of the season.

Any way you slice it, the way the title game is decided not the way it should be. I am not sure who the best team in the country is. I personally believe its Southern Cal. Their defense could hold any offense in the country in check and I think the athletes they have on offense would score points on any defense. If Florida and Southern Cal played on a neutral field, I would take Southern Cal but would not I be surprised if the Gators won. I also can’t say that Utah or Texas wouldn’t beat the Trojans or the Gators.

The fact is, we need a playoff. There is no other way to put it. I know that there would still be teams that argue they were left out of the playoff but when four teams have a legitimate claim to the crown, there is something wrong. We won’t see one for awhile but we need a playoff.