MIAMI -- Tom Osborne, thanks for coming. Please stop by on your way out. We have some nice parting gifts for you.
Unfortunately, a national championship isn't one of them. Not even a share of it.
Really, there can't be any controversy over this one. No reason for barroom debates. No reason for a split poll. No reason for co-national champions.
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Is that Nebraska's Ahman Green doing a cartwheel to celebrate the Cornhuskers' Orange Bowl victory? (AP)
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It's cut-and-dried, or should be. The king of college football is Michigan -- not Nebraska ... not Michigan and Nebraska. But once again, we've been set up and let down by the Bowl Ambivalence ... er, Alliance ... which hems and haws around, and leaves far too much to subjection.
And leaves too many people begging.
"AFTER THIS, IF ANYONE THINKS Michigan could beat Nebraska, then vote for Michigan by all means," Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost said. "(But) I don't think anyone out there with a clear conscience can say Nebraska doesn't deserve a national championship -- or at least a share of it."
Osborne addressed the No. 1 issue this way: "We did everything we could. We won 13 games -- and that's all we played."
However, the system is flawed. The polls used for crowning the Division I national champion also encourages a team to run up the score, which isn't hard to do when you're a superior Nebraska team bent on doing just that in the second half against a whipped puppy from Knoxville, Tenn.
"(Osborne) wasn't very kind to us in the second half," said Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer, who added that he will cast his vote for Nebraska.
That's all well and good. But give us a playoff system. Give us a definitive national champion. And until that time comes, if it ever does, at least give us the right national champion.
NO. 1 MICHIGAN BEAT WASHINGTON STATE 21-16 in the Rose Bowl New Year's night. No. 2 Nebraska beat Tennessee 42-17 here Friday night. Next year's Super Alliance will include the Rose Bowl, but that doesn't do us much good now.
The current format couldn't even come up with a worthy opponent for Nebraska's Big Red Machine. Florida State would've made a much better opponent for the bigger, stronger, quicker Cornhuskers.
Instead, the Seminoles were sent off to New Orleans to beat up on Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl while Peyton Manning and the Vols were pancaked so badly in the third and fourth quarters that poor Manning's uniform looked like a white towel waving in the evening breeze.
Let's face it. Michigan is the only real No. 1 team in the nation, or should be, and that should go for both polls, even the one in which the coaches (such as Fulmer) may want to say so long to the retiring Osborne with a handshake, a hug and a vote against Michigan.
Why could we still wake up Saturday to a split poll with co-national champions? Why shouldn't we trust the coaches?
IT WOULD TAKE A SWING OF 23 votes from Michigan to Nebraska to make that happen. Likely? No. Possible? Yes. Would it be wrong?
Yes. Dead wrong.
If Michigan gets what it deserves -- it's first national championship in 50 years -- Nebraska will become the second undefeated team in the past three years to wind up out of the No. 1 picture. It happened to the '95 Penn State Nittany Lions (12-0) who lost out -- ironically enough -- to Nebraska.
But that's the fault of the no-playoff system, not the fault of Nebraska in '95 or Michigan this season.
En route to a 12-0 record, Michigan defeated seven bowl teams, although it also can be said that those seven teams -- including Rose Bowl casualty Washington State -- went 0-7 in their bowl games.
COME TO THINK OF IT, THAT MIGHT be the most damning statement that anyone can make about the Wolverines.
But you can also point out that Michigan played the nation's toughest schedule, and won each week with one of the nation's best defenses, which included the first Heisman Trophy winner who played primarily a defensive position -- cornerback Charles Woodson ... and it didn't a miraculous play to earn one of its wins.
Nebraska deserved to lose Nov. 8 against Missouri. That's when the Cornhuskers forced overtime on the controversial end zone play, and then went on to win 45-38 in OT.
There haven't been co-national champions since it happened back-to-back years at the start of this decade -- Colorado and Georgia Tech in 1990 and Miami and Washington in 1991.
Let's hope it stays that way.
Ray Buck is CBS SportsLine's national columnist.
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