It's about the best you can do with BCS

MIAMI -- Playoffs? Who needs playoffs? And isn't that ironic in another season when the "P-word" was again front and center in a Bowl Championship Series controversy?

Make that "controversies," which rocked the BCS some more and prompted the critics to say again that the only way to make things work right is to play down the schedule, game by game, until you emerge with two teams and one game.

Actually, the Orange Bowl will come very close to that. No. 1 Southern Cal and No. 2 Oklahoma will end the 2004 college football season tonight the way they began it: on top, arguing over who is better.

Oh, you still have arguments. The season already produced one unbeaten team in Division 1-A, Utah, which finished with a bang by rolling over Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl. And Auburn, which felt it had a legitimate claim to a BCS title-game slot, finished its campaign with a 16-13 victory in the Sugar Bowl over Virginia Tech last night.

But the system -- with all of its flaws -- did spit out two unbeaten and championship-worthy teams: USC, the defending national champion, is riding a 21-game winning streak, the longest active streak in college football, and Oklahoma, which is in its second consecutive BCS title game and third in five years.

These are schools that know what championships are all about. At Sunday's Media Day, both teams had their "business as usual" look, not the wide-eyed "welcome to Disney World" stare that many teams have when they experience the bright lights of the BCS title game.

"This is why you come to USC," said Trojans quarterback Matt Leinart, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. "To play in games like these. With the media and all the hype, it's fun. You don't want to be in any different situation. I love it. I love having pressure on my shoulders and all that stuff. I've been having pressure my whole life, so this is a spot where we want to be as a team. We like being on the national stage where everyone is watching us."

Combined, the schools have 17 national championships. The game features the last two Heisman Trophy winners in Leinart and Oklahoma quarterback Jason White. USC coach Pete Carroll and Oklahoma's Bob Stoops look to be among the next generation of coaching legends in the Bobby Bowden/Joe Paterno mold.

"I think this could be one of the better matchups in the last 15 or 20 years," said Oklahoma offensive coordinator Chuck Long. "Then you add to it the TV and it being the only game of the day. You also have the West Coast market and that Oklahoma has been a national name the last four years.

"We have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated quite a bit, have had a lot of media attention and a lot of TV games. And, of course, this is our third national championship game in five years. You add all of that and you also have the 2003 Heisman Trophy winner versus the 2004 Heisman Trophy winner. They have good players, we have good players. You add all of that together and it adds up to a big, big game."

The teams are set up the same way, too, with a Heisman quarterback, a multitalented running back -- USC's Reggie Bush was fifth in Heisman voting, Oklahoma's Adrian Peterson second -- and a big-play defense.

"I don't want to say we are mirror images of each other," said Stoops, "but there are a lot of similarities in style of play."

Just how good the game is will be determined by who is more ready to play after a layoff that is almost a month long. The offenses might take a few series to find the rhythm they had at the end of the regular season, when Oklahoma rolled over Colorado in the Big 12 title game and USC crushed cross-town rival UCLA.

Now they are here in the season's final game, hoping to end on the same high note on which they began.

Playoff? It's all of that.