Ah, the offseason. That magical time in the college football calendar when questions like “If USC is on the blunt end of the NCAA hammer and if as part of that hammering Reggie Bush is retroactively declared ineligible and USC is forced to vacate their 2004 wins and if that vacation triggers that new BCS bylaw that allows them to strip the Trojans of their 2004 BCS title and if the BCS decides that, yeah, they’re following through with said stripping and if in response the Associated Press, whose title doesn’t actually have any formal ties to the BCS’s in the first place, decides to take a new vote six years after the fact, should they vote Auburn as the new 2004 national champions and should Auburn accept and recognize that as a legitimate national championship?” aren’t just treated seriously by a few random bloggers–they’re worthy of getting entire columns devoted to them by the likes of Tony Barnhart and Kevin Scarbinsky.
Those columns appeared much earlier this week–along with blog posts by the likes of Blutarsky*, Clay Travis, and Jay Coulter–so I’m a little behind, though it’s not like timing matters all that much when you’re discussing an entirely academic, hypothetical question anyways, right? We’re in agreement the AP will bother to re-vote something like this just before a guy in a Smokey costume leads a coup to install our new government of bears, right**? Right.
But for what it’s worth, here’s my opinion: Auburn should not recognize 2004 as a national championship season, no matter what the BCS or the AP decide. For several reasons:
1. The 2004 team doesn’t need their approval; that season doesn’t need any further embellishment. Would I have preferred Auburn to play in the Orange Bowl that year for a crystal football? Yes. Would I have preferred to not spend the last five years wondering how that team would have fared against USC? Yes, yes. If I could somehow go back and kidnap Jason White or whateve else I might have to do to keep the Sooners out of the title game, would I? Yes, yes, yes.
But changing what happened then is not the same as simply throwing a bunch of asterisks around now. The 2004 team was perfect. Their 2004 season was perfect. To try and retroactively award them something today suggests, however subtly, that there was something else left for them to accomplish, some way (other than preseason poll balloting) in which Campbell and Cadillac and Ronnie and Marcus and Carlos were inferior to the teams ahead of them.
They weren’t. I know that, you know that. And I wouldn’t appreciate being told today, even in the kindly manner of “Oh now you’re champions”, that they were. The 2004 season is what it gloriously is, with or without anyone’s approval.
2. This is exactly what the Tide would do. Despite what Jay and K-Scar have argued, that Alabama would embrace the AP re-vote faster than you could say “Dunkel Index” is all the more reason for me to say Auburn shouldn’t have a thing to do with it. They’re the ones who need the cold shower and a lie-down whenever, say, the Lauderdale County Football Fan Club announces their Tandy 3000 has spit out the Tide as the best team from 19-dickety-two, not us.
The opinion of every halfway-rational Auburn fan I’ve ever spoken to has been that if it didn’t happen on the field, OK, it didn’t happen. Since the 2004 teams wasn’t given a fair chance to make it happen on the field, screw it, we’re fine without it. We have the 1957 national championship, and a 2004 season that means just as much without the BCS’s pat on the head. That’s the way it goes. We don’t have to go begging for history revisions or trumpet half-baked statistical nonsense years after the fact to validate the successes of our football team.
3. It wouldn’t help stop it from happening again. Right now, Auburn’s snub in 2004 remains the single biggest and best argument out there for a playoff of some kind. (I maintain that if it would just happen a second time to someone, anyone, from the SEC/Big 10/Pac-10/Big 12, the debate would be over.) If we go back and “fix it” and say all’s well that ends well, we’re just inviting the powers that be to live with the possibility that someone else could receive the same screw-job, since it might turn out all right in the end. Blecch.
4. It would stop this idea that Auburn fans claim 2004 as a title already. Again: I don’t know any lucid Auburn fan who’ll tell you the Tigers have won two national championships. I’m beyond tired of being told that because a “salesman’s sample” ring popped up on eBay once that we’re all running around telling everyone who’ll listen how we won a title that year. We didn’t win a national championship in 2004. We know. We’re OK with that. Really.
5. It’s just stupid. C’mon: we find out Reggie Bush was on the take, so now we’re going to pretend all the things that happened that season didn’t happen? There’s a reason “vacated wins” are a slap on the wrist and punishments going forward are the ones programs really fear. (Unless you’re Bobby Bowden.) What’s done is done.
And what was done by the 2004 team remains as amazing, thrilling, and wonderful as the day it was, well, done. Even if there was more than a snowball’s chance in hell they might get some extremely late-arriving award for their efforts, it’s the amazement, thrill, and wonder we all shared that mattered. If there is any good to come out of this week’s sound and fury on the topic, it’s that we’ve been reminded of that, and–of course–that team.
*So I hadn’t actually looked at the good Senator’s post for a few days before starting mine, and now that I read it again, my opening is very similar to his. It’s not conscious or intentional, I assure you. Great minds, after all.
**First major decision: New, mind-bogglingly lucrative honey subsidies.
Photo via.
Well said; I’ve always believed that the difference between Auburn fans and Alabama fans is their dependence upon outsiders to validate them (“You like me! You really like me!!). Case in point: The 1966 team, arguably one of their two or three best all-time teams, is not counted in their “14”, but the ’41 team, which was shut out by both Vandy and MSU, is, all because some pencil pusher decided it was so.
We Auburn folk know in our hearts that the ’57 team, the ’83 team, and the ’04 team were the best, regardless of whether the pollsters agree or not.
Yeah, anytime you’re trying to make fun of Alabama claiming too many national championships, the first stop is 1941, when they finished 9-2, 3rd in the SEC, and 20th (yeah, number 20) in the AP poll, and still somehow think that’s a national title.
Don’t forget ’93-’94. 20 in a row, which still stands as AU’s longest winning streak I believe.
Bears are the number one threat to America, Jerry.
I fully agree. The 2004 season is already legendary. Awarding the BCS trophy with a scribbled correction on the brass at this late date would just add insult to injury; a meaningless gesture not decided upon the field of play.
Hell, I’d rather Bama claim it as yet another one of theirs rather than it be given as an afterthought to Auburn.
Sullivan013
Re: #1
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t touch Jason White. I’d find a way to get Reggie Bush busted in time to keep USC out of the Orange Bowl. Auburn would have run the Sooners out of that stadium just as easily as USC did.
Sullivan, I think you nailed it!
If (and I mean IF) the AP were to revote that title in Auburn’s favor. President Gogue should issue a public reply to the effect of “No thanks. Try sending it to Tuscaloosa. I’m sure they’ll take it off your hands.”
That would make me smile.
Completely agreed, WBE, although I don’t like your hesitation in stating that Auburn had the best team in the country in 2004.
I mean, after four straight SEC national titles, it’s pretty much accepted everywhere in the country except on the west coast. (And maybe even there, too. Couple weeks ago I dropped by an Oakland Raiders message board just because I felt the need to give them an honest and knowledgeable opinion on Jason Campbell, and the conversation quickly turned to how raw our 2004 team was and how bad they got screwed.)
And I mean that even with USC in the picture. Sure, I remember all the media hype and jive and how everybody in the world thought USC was an unstoppable killing machine back then. But looking back, they weren’t much at all. I remember when that season was going on, all we heard was how USC is gonna go down as one of the greatest teams of all time, how they could beat the Detroit Lions, and how we’re gonna be hearing about this particular squad for years to come. And now it’s years to come, and you don’t hear anything. Hell, just looking back at the schedule, they coulda woulda shoulda lost to Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and UCLA.
Now, hindsight is 20/20. We saw them bleed in 2005, and now, our 2004 team alumni has had tons of success in the NFL, while 2004 USC has produced a career backup quarterback and that slot receiver guy that got dumped by Kim Kardashian.
ANYWAY, all this does is go to your point, that even if this crazy re-vote stuff somehow happens, Auburn should deny the acknowledgement. We didn’t accept the 2004 AP Poll where we were #2, so why accept a 2010-2004 AP Poll where we are #1; especially if it’s a poll that doesn’t have USC on it and, specifically, on it behind us.
But, regardless of all of that, the main reason I don’t want to accept this thing is because I don’t want to even touch the great entity that is the 2004 season. People who say they have a bitter taste in their mouth when they think of that year must have clearly forgotten how EUPHORIC the season was. That year was as good as it gets. It was perfect. From where I’m sitting, we as fans had a whole heck of a lot more fun during our 2004 run than Alabama fans just did in their national title run — and that just goes as a testament to how special our 2004 team was.
The team got rings, Jordan-Hare got an SEC Champions banner, and we fans got a Sports Illustrated commemorative edition, and the T-shirts with the player waving the flag, and the whole nine yards.
It was perfect. And I don’t want anything to change it. The mystique, the aura, the memories — the whole thing.
It was better than a national championship. It was 2004.
I sorta agree and kinda disagree with you Jerry — but like I told Wayne “hey you and I know as much about football as many sportswriters and more than most, we should just vote for a winner” and we did. Guess what? Auburn won the first Wayne and Hobbes Board NC in 2004.
I think Texas won it in 05 ( or we forgot to vote) UF in 06, no team was worthy in 07, Utah in 08 and Boise State in 09.
Point is that I know, I KNOW, that Auburn would have skull dragged Oklahoma and beaten USC in 04 —just as I know that Bo is the greatest all around athlete of our generation. So do I need a bunch of hacks whose jobs are being threatened by bloggers in their mom ‘s basement to validate AU 2004? No. No I do not. Did AU win a MNC in 04? Yes.Yes we did.
You guys are all forgetting one thing…National Championships are not won in college football, they are awarded. So if the AP goes back and decides to award Auburn, I say accept it. Just don’t claim it.
Auburn didnt win the 1957 championship on the field either. Ohio State did.