Just who is No. 1?

Now that I've recovered from watching a wild weekend of college football, I'll give you something to ponder.
I don't listen to much talk radio. But I do listen to parts of one show on 100.1 FM, the local all-sports station here in Florence. And I don't always agree with ESPN Radio's Colin Cowherd, but I do agree with something he said Monday, that Southern Cal shouldn't have gotten bumped from the top spot in the AP college football poll.
Not that it ultimately matters. After all, the AP poll is no longer used in the confusing BCS formula, so it has no bearing whatsoever on which teams ultimately play in the national championship game.
Southern Cal got knocked from its perch and down to No. 2 behind LSU because it struggled to win on the road at Washington. But in my opinion, the Trojans deserved kudos for winning that game, considering everything they had to overcome to do so against a Washington team that is not a pushover by a long shot. USC lost two starting offensive linemen on one play. The Trojans committed 16 penalties. They turned the ball over three times. They have a passing game that frightens no one and they made special teams mistakes, like that late blocked punt that allowed Washington to score a touchdown and stay in the game.
All that, on the road in a hostile environment. And they still won.
The Trojans should be rewarded for a gut-check victory instead of being penalized for it, although "penalized" might be too harsh a word, since the AP poll, as I said earlier, really doesn't mean anything in the long run.
That's not to say that LSU is not the best team. After watching how the Tigers manhandled Virginia Tech and South Carolina from a physical standpoint recently, it's hard to imagine a team that's any better (not that the Hokies and Gamecocks are world beaters). But then they go to Tulane and stink it up in the first half before pulling away in the second half for a comfortable win.
If the pollsters who switched their No. 1 votes from USC to LSU did so because they just think LSU is better, that's OK. If they did it because they thought USC's victory was not impressive enough, they were off base. The Trojans' win was of a much higher quality than that of LSU.

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