Teams
The USC Trojans and the Oklahoma Sooners were invited to play in the BCS Championship game in the 2005 Orange Bowl. This gave the Rose Bowl an at-large pick, as they gave up their traditional Pacific-10 Conference champion representative. The 2005 Fiesta Bowl also got an at-large pick, having given up Oklahoma to the Orange Bowl. Because the non-BCS Utah Utes team had finished ranked in the top eight, either the Fiesta Bowl or Rose Bowl had to select them. That left one other slot open for the highest BCS ranked team. The Rose Bowl had first choice of this team over Utah, having given up the higher ranked team.
There was a BCS controversy in the remaining at-large team that was selected to play in the BCS bowl games. The California Golden Bears expected to get the invite, having only lost one game to the #1 and undefeated Trojans. Meanwhile, the Texas Longhorns had lost only one game as well - to the #2 and undefeated Oklahoma Sooners. In the 2004 NCAA Division I-A football rankings on November 27, Cal was in the #4 BCS position and Texas was #5. Texas remained idle the next Saturday, but Cal had defeated the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles in a makeup game from Hurricane Ivan on December 4. Going into the game, the Golden Bears were made aware that while margin of victory did not affect computer rankings, it did affect human polls and just eight voters changing their vote could affect the final standings. In a dramatic twist, Texas, who had been left out of the BCS the year before because of the Oklahoma loss in the Big 12 championship, got enough voters to change their mind in the final vote and more computer points to slide into the BCS #4 slot. When the December 4 rankings came out, Texas was in the #4 BCS position and Cal was in the #5 position. Texas edged California out of the #4 spot by a mere .0102 points. The final poll positions had been unchanged with Cal at #4 AP, #4 coaches, and #6 computers polls and Texas at #6 AP, #5 coaches, and #4 computer polls.
Read more about this topic: 2005 Rose Bowl
Famous quotes containing the word teams:
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)