More Schools Should Follow Auburn's Lead And Claim Fake National Championships
USC was forced to vacate a 2004 title due to an NCAA punishment after going 13-0 and beating Oklahoma 55-19
The Auburn Tigers made headlines on Tuesday by embarrassing themselves, though this time, in a welcome shift from recent seasons, it wasn't on the football field.
Auburn, out of nowhere, decided to unilaterally recognize several new "National Championships," from the 1910 season, 1914, 1958, and incredibly, 2004. The 2004 season, you might remember, ended with the USC Trojans winning the BCS National Championship, finishing out a 13-0 season.
That SC team outscored its opponents 496-169, including a 55-19 destruction of the Oklahoma Sooners in the Orange Bowl. Thanks to an absurd NCAA punishment, the Trojans were forced to "officially" vacate the championship. And apparently Auburn just…claimed it? Based on nothing?
Yes, Auburn had an outstanding season in 2004; the Tigers went undefeated and won the SEC. No, they did not win a title. But now that they've claimed one, maybe other schools should follow suit and start rewarding themselves for good seasons with made-up championships.
DALLAS - Head coach Hugh Freeze of Auburn University speaks during SEC Football Media Days at Omni Dallas Hotel on July 18, 2024. (Photo by Omar Vega/Getty Images)
USC Has Plenty Of Championships To Claim
Thanks to the oddities of college football, where there used to be several ranking systems that crowned their own national champion, there are a limitless number of potential individual seasons that could qualify for Auburn-style revisionist history. And revisionist history might be an understatement.
So instead of casting a wide net to find some new fake championships to claim, it's easy to look at the program Auburn took a championship from: USC.
Here's a championship the Trojans could decide to claim, and it's even from a similar timeframe: the 2005-2006 season. That year ended with one of the best games in college football history, the legendary USC-Texas matchup in the Rose Bowl. Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White, Vince Young, tightly fought game that came down to the wire and ended in a 41-38 Longhorns win and a Texas championship.
Except, what if it didn't?
That remarkable game-winning drive by Vince Young in the fourth quarter to win may never have happened if the referees had correctly ruled that Young's knee was down in the second quarter as he made a pitch to Selvin Young for a touchdown.
Even better: referees and replay officials at the time admitted that Young's knee was down and that issues with replay television feeds prevented the call from being overturned. The Associated Press reported in 2006: "…One of the TV feeds they were receiving while trying to review the play had shots of fans in the stands. They did not see a shot from the camera angle that definitively showed the wrong call was made on the field until it was too late."
Sure enough, "The problem was fixed after that play."
So bad officiating cost SC on the Young replay and a Reggie Bush fumble that was actually an illegal forward pass. Sounds like the perfect candidate for a new national championship for the Trojans to recognize because they feel like it! Obviously, they are the "true" champions and clearly were the best team in the country that entire season, only losing because of poor officiating and some questionable replay review antics.
We're not done there.
How about the 2008 Trojans? In the regular season, they outscored its opponents 450-93. They obliterated a top-5 Ohio State team 35-3 at the Coliseum, beat Notre Dame 38-3, beat a ranked Oregon team 44-10, allowed three points to a ranked Cal team, and their one loss was on the road to an Oregon State team that finished the year ranked #19 in the AP Poll.
But SC was denied an opportunity to play for a title because the Pac-10 had no conference championship game, Florida had Tim Tebow and Oklahoma somehow jumped from 4th to 2nd in the final poll of the season.
Still, the Trojans dominated #6 Penn State in the Rose Bowl, and finished the year 12-1. Florida was 13-1. Who's to say SC doesn't deserve a championship that year, because it was denied the right to play for one?
Maybe SC should also claim 2002, a year in which it beat #7 Notre Dame 44-13, then demolished #3 Iowa 38-17 in the Orange Bowl. After all, Nebraska got to the title game that year even after losing to #14 Colorado in their final game of the season. That sounds unfair to the surging Trojans. Boom, championship.
After all, the Auburn Tigers are claiming 2004 because "Darryl W. Perry and GBE College Football Ratings" picked them as champions. I'm Ian A. Miller, and I pick that the 2002 and 2008 Trojans were the true champions. There, that's all they need.
Then there's 1976. USC finished that season by winning 11 games in a row. The last three games were wins over #2 UCLA, #13 Notre Dame, and #2 Michigan in the Rose Bowl. Six different "major selector" polls picked SC as National Champions. But the undefeated Pittsburgh Panthers claim it. Well, not anymore.
Look, there's nothing specific about the Auburn Tigers that makes them worse than anybody else at this nonsense, any number of schools, including Alabama and Tennessee, have made a number of ridiculous, nonsensical championship claims. This is what happens with no specific system. But if they're going to do it, other teams should too.