U of L strong, but vote for No. 1 a joke

[bullwark]

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE

BILOXI, Miss. - We all saw it for ourselves.

Southern California buried the Oklahoma Sooners. Knocked 'em upside the head. Kicked 'em while they were down. Matt Leinart threw the ball all over the lot in the Orange Bowl, and the Sooners did everything but pull a France and say, "We surrender."

Southern Cal didn't have to share anything with LSU this time. Auburn never got its deserved shot at the Trojans -- thanks, Roy Kramer, for bringing us the BCS -- but it was hard to argue with Southern Cal's greatness.

Leinart, the Heisman Trophy winner, is back for the 2005 season. Tailback Reggie Bush is ready to leave tire marks on Cal, Stanford and the rest of the Pac-10 one more time. Every guy who got in the end zone in the Trojans' 55-19 dismantling of Jason White and OU is back for the Men of Troy.

And some guy actually picked Louisville as the No. 1 team in college football, as chosen by The Associated Press.

Hey, I love The 'Ville. Darrell Griffith and the Doctors of Dunk. Sheer insanity in the infield at the Kentucky Derby. Wes Unseld, the late Johnny Unitas.

My beloved alma mater, Western Kentucky, is located a couple hours south of Louisville. Good people. Good athletes. Great bourbon.

But if the Cardinals are the No. 1 team in college football, in their first year in the Big East, well, I want a recount on that 1972 presidential election. Somebody gypped George McGovern out of a few electoral votes.

Wait, it gets worse.

The only other schools to receive No. 1 votes in the AP poll were Southern California and Texas. Southern Cal pulled in 60. Vince Young and the Longhorns got four.

Texas couldn't beat Oklahoma at gunpoint. This is the team that had to politick to get into a BCS bowl last season. The Lone Star State has more blue-chippers than your garden variety Vegas casino, which is why Mack Brown is known as Mr. February. It's a solid program. But until UT actually wins something, like, say, a Big 12 championship, aren't we being a little premature?

The guidelines for being an AP poll voter are pretty simple. Study your ballot. Vote your conscience. Don't be a homer. I've participated on the poll board four or five times, the last one being the 2002 season, when Ohio State lucked out against Miami for the national championship.

Curiosity being what it is, the first thing I did when I caught a sniff of Louisville's first-place vote was call the AP in New York. They'd already taken a few calls on the subject. One of them, it turns out, was from Rick Bozich, a columnist from The Courier-Journal in Louisville. Rick happens to be voting in this year's AP poll board, and he's also the only member from Kentucky. Anyway, I've known Rick for a decade or so, and I was able to run him down on the horn. The guy from the AP had already told me Bozich wasn't the dude who voted The 'Ville as his No. 1 team, which I had pretty much figured beforehand. Bobby Petrino's Cardinals have toiled in Conference USA, before Louisville and Cincinnati split for the Big East. They don't compete with the likes of Michigan, Florida State or LSU here. Not in either league.

We're talking Tulane, Houston and UAB.

Bozich talked to the AP voter who made his leap of faith with Louisville. His name is Joe Giglio, and he writes for The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C.

(Rick, as it turns out, voted the Cards ninth on his ballot.)

"I'd planned on doing my column on the poll, anyway, and I called the guy from the AP," Bozich said. "He told me Louisville got a first-place vote, and I almost drove off the road. He gave me Joe's phone number, and we talked for a few minutes.

"(Giglio) saw Louisville play on TV a few times last year, and he thought their (2005) schedule was user friendly. He predicted the final record of all the contenders, and didn't think any team from the BCS conferences could go undefeated.

"I think ninth is realistic. Louisville's good. They've got some really good players. (New quarterback) Brian Brohm might be very good, but you could put Joe Montana back there and he might not have the year (Stefan) LeFors did last year. He completed about 75 percent of his passes."

Fear not, Mr. Giglio.

Bozich told the North Carolina scribbler about Corky Simpson, a columnist from the Tucson Citizen who stubbornly picked Alabama as his No. 1 team in college football for two or three months in 1992. The rest of the free world went with the more conventional choice of Miami.

Alabama finally got its shot at Miami in the Sugar Bowl.

And the Hurricanes got waxed to the tune of 34-13.

Food for thought, I suppose, for The 'Ville and Cardinal Nation. Still, Southern Cal should have been the preseason No. 1 team. Exhibit A, the Orange Bowl.