GatorBait.net - Team of the decade

July 27, 2009

Guerry Smith
GatorBait.net Associate Editor

Florida will merit almost every conceivable accolade if it becomes the first team to win three BCS national championships in four years.

Urban Meyer would top everyone's list as the best college football coach in America. Tim Tebow would go down as the most accomplished football player in modern NCAA history. After handling the difficult pressure of being overwhelming favorites -?can't recall the last time a team received all but one first-place vote at SEC Media Days - the Gators' departing seniors could wrap themselves in glory for the rest of their lives.

But here's one title the Gators don't deserve: team of the decade.

Team of the last half of the decade? Absolutely.

Team of the decade? Not if the criteria includes sustained excellence.

Unfortunately for Florida, the Ron Zook years count on its permanent record. In fact, there should be an NCAA rule that disqualifies any school from consideration if Zook coached it for any part of the qualification period.

Seriously, though, USC is the team of the decade. The Trojans are 93-22 to Florida's 87-31 through the first nine years of the 21st century, a sizable difference. You can point out the weakness of the Pac-10 all you want, but it is much harder to explain away the slew of top-rated recruiting classes and constant supply of high NFL draft picks USC has produced to back up its record.

The Trojans have finished fourth or higher in the final Associated Press poll for seven consecutive seasons. The Gators have finished among the top 10 only four times in the decade.

The Trojans were unranked in 2000 and 2001, spanning the end of the Paul Hackett era and the beginning of Pete Carroll's. The Gators were unranked in 2002 and 2004, Zook's first and last years.

The Trojans have won six of their last seven bowl games and are 6-2 overall for the decade. The Gators have won three of four bowl games under Meyer but were 1-4 from 2000 to 2004.

The Trojans won 34 in a row from 2003 to 2005, a streak that ended with a BCS title loss to Texas in one of the most exciting games ever played. The Gators' longest winning streak is 11, a number that would expand to 25 if they went undefeated this season.

Florida's trump card over USC would be its three national championships, a difference that would mean more if the rules of the BCS game had not changed significantly within the decade. USC, which destroyed Oklahoma to win the 2004 championship, would have played in the 2003 title tilt with the same BCS formula in use today. Instead, the Trojans sat out even though they were ranked No. 1 in both polls and would have been favored over championship-game combatants Oklahoma or LSU.

On the surface, the USC-Florida question resembles the great Atlanta Braves-New York Yankees debate in the 1990s. Trust me, nothing irritated Marty Cohen more than hearing Braves fans or announcers touting them as the team of the 1990s when they won only one World Series to the Yankees' three. The Atlanta argument: the Braves made the playoffs eight straight times from 1991 to 1999 (the '94 season was canceled), while the Yankees' first postseason trip was 1995.

The comparison breaks down for one huge reason.

The Braves choked like dogs in the postseason, including losing eight games in a row to the Yankees from game 3 of the 1996 World Series through game 4 of the '99 Series, the only times they met. USC almost always plays well in big games and has not faced Florida.

If the Gators wax the Trojans in the 2009 BCS championship game, maybe we will need to revisit the discussion.

Otherwise, let's stick to a more relevant claim. If the Gators win it all this year, no team in modern college football history will have made as impressive a run in that short a span.

Nebraska finished No. 1 three times from 1994 to 1997 just before the advent of the BCS, but two of those titles came with caveats.

In 1994, the Cornhuskers leapfrogged Penn State in the Associated Press poll at the beginning of November right after the Nittany Lions beat Ohio State 63-14. Both teams finished undefeated, and Nebraska remained on top.

In 1997, Tom Osborne received a retirement gift from his peers, who vaulted Nebraska over Michigan in the final coaches' poll (Michigan was No. 1 in the AP balloting) even though both teams beat suspect opposition in their bowl games -?Tennessee for the Cornhuskers and Washington State for the Wolverines.

We'll never know if Nebraska would have beaten Penn State and Michigan. For all of the flaws of the BCS, we know the Gators had to prove themselves in championship games, humiliating Ohio State and humbling Oklahoma's previously unstoppable offense.

Never mind the mythical title of team of the decade. Three championship trophies would be an enough reward in itself.

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