Last night, the Florida Gators defeated the Oklahoma Sooners, and have been declared the national champions of Division I college football.  The final gun signalled the start of the annual debate about which team was really the best in college football this year.  Every year, the awarding of the BCS Championship Trophy does more to start this debate than end it, as it was designed to do.  This year, there are four teams (Florida, Utah, USC and Texas) that can make legitimate arguments that they should be considered "national champions."

Florida is the team that will go down in the record books as the 2008-09 National Champions.  They won the BCS National Championship game.  They ended the year on top of both the AP Poll and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll.  They were champions of the Southeastern Conference, and beat the champion of the Big XII conference, arguably the two top conferences in the nation this year.  But still, there is that one blemish on their resume.  One loss, at home, to Ole Miss.  And so there are questions.

USC seems to be in this position every year.  Every year they put up one bad game, and it haunts them.  This year, the stinker occurred in Corvallis, against a pretty good Oregon State team.  In the end, they were able to make it close, losing to the team that would end the year as either the 18th (AP) or 19th (USA Today) ranked team in the country.  How does that loss compare to Florida's loss to Ole Miss, which ended the year ranked either 14th (AP) or 15th (USA Today) - a loss that occurred on their home field?  Yet Florida was invited to the BCS Championship game as the #2 team in the country, while USC was ranked #5 and played Penn State in the Rose Bowl.  USC plays in the PAC 10, which is often characterized as USC and the 9 Dwarfs.  But the PAC 10 finished with four teams (USC, Oregon, Oregon State and California) ranked in the top 25 of the USA Today poll (Cal was 26th in the AP poll), while the juggernaut known as the SEC finished with... four teams in the top 25  (Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Ole Miss).  Maybe, then, it was the strength of schedule that put Florida over the top?  Florida played five games against teams that ended the year in the top 25 of the USA Today poll, Ole Miss, Georgia, Florida State, Alabama and Oklahoma, going 4-1 against that competition.  USC, on the other hand, played Ohio State, Oregon State, Oregon, California and Penn State - five teams from the end of year poll, and went 4-1 against that competition.  Oh, and the PAC 10 went 5-0 in Bowl games (yes, one of those was Oregon State's 3-0 win over Pittsburgh).

Of the 1 loss teams left out of the BCS Championship game, Texas has, perhaps, the best loss on their resume.  Their one loss came at the hands of Texas Tech, who ended the year as the 12th ranked team in the country according to both the AP and USA Today.  Not only that, but Texas Tech had to pull off one of the most memorable plays in recent memory in order to secure the victory.  Texas is also the only team in the end-of-year top 5 that can boast a victory over one of the two teams that played for the National Championship.  Rest assured, we will see signs proclaiming the final score of 45-35 when the Red River Rivalry resumes in 2009.  But is a Texas team that struggled to beat Ohio State, 24-21, the equal of a USC team that beat Ohio State 35-3?

Utah has a pretty good argument that they are the real National Champions.  They were the only team to go undefeated, 13-0.  They stood against all comers, and remained unblemished.  In their final game, they beat Alabama, a team that spent five weeks atop the polls, a team that took Florida to the limit.  After their first 3 possessions, they were ahead, 21-0. Alabama did manage to cut the lead to 21-17, but then Utah scored the final 10 points for a final score of 31-17.  Oh, and that Oregon State team that beat USC in Corvallis?  Utah beat them, too - 31-28.  It isn't like they played a slouch of a schedule, either, as Utah went 4-0 against the end-of-year top 25.

In the end, there should be only one, but we are left not with one, but four teams, each with a legitimate claim to the title.  The uncertainty leaves us dissatisfied.  Even the most ardent fan feels it, the doubt, the uncertainty, the not knowing what would have been, what could have been.  Such things were meant to be decided on the field, not by some sort of computer simulation or popularity contest.  Even the Gators, who are speaking with the bravado of those flush with victory, have doubt.  What if it had been USC, Utah, or Texas that had stalked the opposing sideline?  Would the outcome have been the same?  But there is no knowing what might have been, so here we are, at the same crossroads we have faced countless times before.  Lost.  Confused.  Empty.  Unsatisfied.