A title flap

A champ from the Fiesta could mean a splitting headache

PHOENIX -- By Thursday night, this all could be moot.

All this posturing, all the guessing and debating and praying and Ouija board pushing could be nothing more than a forgotten appetizer, a mixed salad before the porterhouse. It could be the Bengals over the Steelers, the steal of second before a home run. It could be whatever it is that comes on before The West Wing.

Miami wins Thursday night, none of this … this talk … matters.

But until then, until No. 1 Miami does what it's supposed to do against Nebraska in the Rose Bowl, national championship dreams will dance in the heads of Oregon or Colorado, whichever wins the Fiesta Bowl on New Year's Day.

"All I would say," says Colorado defensive coordinator Tom McMahon, "is that if we win, after that some pretty interesting things can happen."

The Fiesta Bowl fell into beauty of a mess with this matchup. The Bowl Championship Series' decision to go with Nebraska-Miami in the Rose Bowl left Oregon (10-1) and Colorado (10-2, with one of those 10 a 62-36 whooping of Nebraska) to bang it out in the Fiesta.

It also left a new breed of BCS haters, led by a sizeable contingent of torch-carrying, keyboard-killing, camera-chewing members of the national media.

"No team that loses 62-36 in their last game should be playing for a national title," they say. "Nebraska didn't even win its conference. The BCS is all screwed up. If the Huskers win the Rose Bowl, we're not voting for them. We're voting for somebody else."

The yellowcoats that run the Fiesta could barely contain their glee.

For the past week they've been parading the trophy that the Associated Press votes its national champion all over town. The Fiesta has become the Alternate National Championship Game. It has become Rose Bowl Jr. It is the Anti-BCS Title Game.

Instead of being just another bowl -- see Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Humanitarian, Bluebonnet, Tangerine, Peach, Strawberry, Weedeater, Edsel, Jeep, Whatever.com -- the Fiesta now has meaning.

"This game's pretty big," says Colorado coach Gary Barnett, "as big as I've been a part of. It does feel like a national championship game."

The question is whether it should be a national championship game.

Here's a point: If the Huskers can beat a heavily favored, undefeated, No. 1 Miami team in the biggest game of the season, on the biggest stage, then maybe the Huskers should be voted No. 1. In both polls.

Yeah, it's a hard sell, for sure. Getting run over by Colorado in their last game was not a good thing for the Huskers' reputation. Nebraska stunk that day. They stunk as much as a team that racked up a staggering 552 yards (just 30 fewer than Colorado), 354 of them running (26 fewer than Colorado) while turning the ball over four times (Colorado didn't have any) and still scoring 36 points possibly could stink.

But you know what? The Huskers have another problem, too. The AP voters simply don't want to vote for them. It's the 62-point thing. Nebraska would have to beat Miami 62-0 to even merit any consideration from the AP voters. Crashing the BCS party by giving the Fiesta Bowl winner a share of the national title -- split titles, remember, are what the BCS was supposed to cure -- is infinitely more desirable.

So if Miami loses, the coach's champ, Nebraska, almost certainly will have to share its national title with either Oregon or Colorado, which will be the AP champ.

Maybe none of this will matter. Maybe, by Thursday night, Miami will have won and all this talk about a national champion coming out of the Fiesta Bowl will be moot.

Or, maybe, Nebraska wins big and everything starts up all over again.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

Related information
Multimedia
Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video
Search our site	Watch CNN/SI 24 hours a day
	Sports Illustrated and CNN have combined to form a 24 hour sports news and information channel. To receive CNN/SI at your home call your cable operator or DirecTV.