One is playing for the national championship of college football for the first time in its 115-year history. The other is playing for its second national championship, the last coming in 1957.
The Oregon Ducks and Auburn Tigers have never met on the football field. Neither team was ranked in the Associated Press preseason top 10 to open the year.
In four-and-a-half weeks, the two teams will come together with the biggest possible prize on the line.
“I am excited about the prospects of where we are going to go and what we are going to do,” Auburn head coach Gene Chizik said in a media release. “Your goal at the beginning of the year, for everybody, is to win your conference championship, that is first, and then whatever lies past that. I am very excited about the possibilities of what is going to happen and have a chance to achieve a goal we set earlier in the season.”
The formal announcement that pitted the Pacific-10 Conference-champion Ducks (12-0, 9-0 Pac-10) against the Southeastern Conference-champion Tigers (13-0, 9-0 SEC) was greeted with temperance over the wait until Jan. 10.
“We got to this point we’re at now by our preparation and we know we’re going to have to work for the next month to show up on the 10th,” Oregon head coach Chip Kelly said. “And that’s what these (guys) are all about. They understand the task at hand, and they accept it heartily.”
As that preparation intensifies, subtexts surrounding the game will steadily come to the forefront. The most interesting of these from a national perspective is the argument over conference supremacy.
In the 12 years of the Bowl Championship Series’ existence, the SEC has sent a representative to the national championship game six times, including each of the last four years — and won all six. (Auburn was snubbed from the title game in 2004, despite going 12-0 and winning the SEC championship game.)
USC is the only Pac-10 school with a BCS national championship, in 2004, and the Trojans account for the conference’s only other appearance. In 2005, a Texas Longhorns squad with Vince Young as quarterback and Chizik as defensive coordinator defeated USC for the title.
Since 1992, Pac-10 schools have actually fared better in head-to-head matchups, with 13 wins to the SEC schools’ 12. Oregon struck a blow for its conference brethren this season by defeating Tennessee in Knoxville; Auburn did not a play a Pac-10 team.
“Who can say a conference is better than another conference or anything like that?” Duck running back Kenjon Barner asked. “We’re just going to go out and play how we have to play.”
Barner’s good friend and backfield mate LaMichael James was named a finalist for the Heisman Trophy this week, along with Auburn quarterback Cam Newton. The 6-foot-6, 250-pound Newton has a virtual stranglehold over the award this season, turning in one of the most spectacular individual seasons in recent memory.
Newton is the nation’s leader in total yardage and passer rating, the latter of which (188.1) would be a record for a Football Bowl Subdivision quarterback. He is blessed with the ability to throw a football far and run it fast, with the power to neutralize smaller defenders and the acceleration to leave behind slower ones.
He does, however, enter the game with questions of eligibility. The NCAA has declared him eligible following reports alleging that Newton’s father, Rev. Cecil Newton, asked for money in order to ensure his son’s commitment to Mississippi State. The investigation remains open, but the dark cloud looms large upon Auburn’s perfect season.
Not so for the Ducks, undefeated and untied for the first time in history.
“I’m just really happy, really happy for everybody else,” sophomore quarterback Darron Thomas said of the season’s accomplishments. “The offensive line did a good job all year being banged up all year … our defense also came out this year and did a tremendous job. I’m just happy for everybody; happy for the Duck fans, and happy for everybody who supported us.”
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Championship game pitted as battle of the conferences
Daily Emerald
December 6, 2010
Courtesy of Emily Adams/The Auburn Plainsman
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