It Quickly Became a Waste of Time

Whoa, Nellie, but didn’t the bowl championship series drop one big ol’ ugly dawg on the Rose Bowl Thursday night?

“It’s 34 to nothing with 3:35 to play,” Keith Jackson said, and he was talking about the first half, not the game, “and it’s quiet at the Rose Bowl.”

So quiet you could hear a Nebraska fumble drop.

So quiet you could hear ABC’s Nielsen ratings go screaming into the night.

Unfortunately for Jackson, Tim Brant and the rest of ABC’s luckless broadcast crew, they couldn’t switch over to “Everybody Loves Raymond.” No, they were stuck with “Nobody Wants Nebraska,” same as the Granddaddy of Them All, and there was no saving any of them.

If the Cornhuskers were going down, and they were, faster than you could say “Oregon Got Jobbed,” they were taking people with them.

Given half a championship matchup, the Rose Bowl and ABC didn’t even get half a championship game. Nebraska fell out of it so early, so swiftly, that Jackson and Brant were down to interviewing one another by the second quarter and telling stories about the officiating crew by the third.

“Are you surprised,” Brant asked Jackson at 27-0,”by what happened?”

Jackson: “Yes I am.”

Brant: “I am too.”

No one bothered to poll the 50,000 Nebraska fans slumping in their Rose Bowl seats, although ABC certainly had enough time to kill.

Brant: “Right now, the Nebraska fans sound like they’re at the library.”

Jackson: “They probably feel like it.”

Read this: Combining their four quarters against Colorado and their first two against Miami, the Cornhuskers were in the process of being outscored, 96-26, in their six most important quarters of the season.

Brant was feeling sorry for them.

He tried to buck up their sagging spirits.

“Keith, I think right now it is critical that the Cornhuskers don’t panic.”

It was 27-0, Miami had played only 21 minutes, and the Hurricanes were driving for more.

Actually, from the Big Red perspective, in 112 years of playing football, there’d never been a better time to panic.

Soon it was 34-0, halftime had come and gone (worth noting: the Nebraska band held Miami scoreless) and Jackson and Brant had two quarters of garbage time to plow through.

Six minutes into the second half, Jackson decided to read off the roster of the game officials. Brant talked about how he had breakfast with one member of the crew. Jackson studied a camera close-up of referee Courtney Mauzy and observed, “Well, Courtney ought to be happy. It’s snowing in North Carolina, he lives in Little Switzerland and the Christmas trees are growin’!”

That took care of 30 seconds.

Time left to play in the third quarter: 8:25.

Seizing upon a theme, ABC had half a good idea for a halftime interview: Bring in Oregon Coach Mike Bellotti for a few comments.

Bellotti’s Ducks had just defeated Colorado by 22 points in the Fiesta Bowl, and Colorado had beaten Nebraska by 26 points. But the BCS computers anointed Nebraska, not Oregon, and with the Cornhuskers behind again by 34 points, Bellotti was the obvious go-to guy.

John Saunders teed it up for the coach: “I think most people would agree that your school belonged here before Nebraska. If that wasn’t evident before the game, it is evident at halftime.”

Yes? Yes? Saunders had it all set up, Bellotti was primed and ready to vent, but the follow-through was a soft step backward, a pulled punch.

“What,” Saunders asked, “can you do to tweak this system and the BCS?”

Tweak the system? How about tweaking the question and asking Bellotti if he felt his Ducks were robbed, if he felt college football fans were robbed, if he felt anyone anywhere needed more evidence that the BCS should be junked immediately and replaced by a national playoff.

But those weren’t the questions Bellotti heard, so he replied, blandly, that “I do think it would have been nice for us to get the chance and the opportunity to be here. The polls had us here.... The computers did not. Maybe as Terry [Bowden] said, maybe we only use the computer if it’s tied or it’s not 1 and 2 clear-cut.”

Miami tailback Clinton Portis danced around Nebraska defenders all evening, but he had nothing on ABC when it came to sidestepping trouble.

Scant mention of the BCS controversy was made during the broadcast, other than Jackson sounding a little annoyed about it during his pregame comments.

“Nebraska has been picked on, they feel, [with] people criticizing in the wake of their loss to Colorado,” Jackson said before holding a hand to his chin. “They are up to here with it.”

With two minutes left in the game, Brant implied that Miami’s 37-14 victory had vindicated the BCS.

“All those critics that have been yelling and screaming about what a sham the BCS is--there is no question in my mind Miami is the one and only national champion this year,” he said.

Well, yes and no.

Miami, the only undefeated team in the country, might be the undisputed champion--but that’s no endorsement for the BCS. If the goal of the BCS is to put the two most qualified teams in the title game, and the BCS had Oregon only No. 4 behind Nebraska and Colorado, then the BCS remains a sham and nothing but.

The BCS just got lucky, is all. Unlike ABC, the Rose Bowl and a national television audience that deserved better.