Ranking the 30 Greatest National Championship Games
By Zach Bigalke
3. 2006 Rose Bowl
#2 Texas d. #1 USC 41-38
BEFORE THE GAME
USC and Texas were on a collision course for one another from the preseason onward. Both the AP and Coaches Top 25 had the Trojans and Longhorns locked into their top two spots from the first poll to the last, and no other team seemed able to assert itself enough to merit consideration. Losses to Miami and Florida State knocked Virginia Tech out of the running. Penn State’s loss at Michigan blemished their chances. And if Virginia Tech was out, so too was the West Virginia team that won the Big East but lost out of conference to the Hokies.
Really, though, the choice was simple. Two teams finished the regular season, and those two teams squared off for the national championship. USC headed to Pasadena with a 34-game winning streak, having won the AP national championship in 2003 and an undisputed crown in 2004. Pete Carroll’s star-studded squad featured two Heisman winners, quarterback Matt Leinart and running back Reggie Bush, in the same backfield. They beat opponents by an average score of 50-21 as they sought a third straight national title.
They faced Heisman finalist Vince Young and the Big 12 champion Longhorns. Texas had been even more formidable offensively, scoring one more point per game during the regular season than USC. They also boasted a much stronger defense, one that gave up just 14.6 points on average. Mack Brown’s team headed west after a 67-point blowout of Colorado in the Big 12 championship game, and they had won 19 straight entering their second straight Rose Bowl appearance.
THE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME
Texas and USC showed why they were clearly the top two teams in the country in a down-to-the-wire thriller. The Trojans scored on their opening drive, with LenDale White getting the touchdown on the ground two and a half minutes into the game. The defenses took over for the next quarter as things remained close. Then the Longhorns scored 16 unanswered points before Mario Danelo kicked a 46-yard field goal in the waning moments to tightened USC’s deficit to 16-10 at the intermission.
There were three lead changes in the third quarter, as White scored two more rushing touchdowns and Young notching his first score of the game. Reggie Bush gave USC an eight-point lead less than four minutes into the final frame, and when Matt Leinart found Dwayne Jarrett with just over six minutes remaining to put the Trojans up 38-26 it appeared as though Carroll’s crew had pulled through in the end. But Young had other ideas, as he ran in his second touchdown of the game with four minutes left.
The defense got the ball back for Young and the Texas offense after stopping a fourth-down play, and Young earned MVP honors by capping his 467 total yards of offense with the game-winning touchdown with 19 seconds remaining. Many are likely to still consider this the most iconic and memorable championship showdown in college football history, though two others also merit consideration.