By Dick Weiss
AUBURN PERFECT, RANKINGS AREN\'T
Must overcome schedule & polls
Brandon Cox and 9-0 Auburn aren\'t yet running away with it.
Auburn (9-0) is third in the this week\'s AP and coaches\' polls and the BCS standings, behind Southern California and Oklahoma. The separation between the top three is close, with USC grading out at .9895, the Sooners second at .9648 and the Tigers third at .9238. But there is a fear around Auburn that the best team in the Southeastern Conference could finish 12-0 and still be left out of national championship game.
As a point of reference, no unbeaten SEC team has ever been shut out of the national championship mix. But there\'s a first time for everything. Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville has tried to refrain from politicking, hoping if his team wins its next three games against Georgia, Alabama and then Tennessee in the SEC championship game, its accomplishments will speak volumes.
"All three of those games will be on national TV," he said. "There will be plenty of chances for people to see us play, to judge us. I know we have the toughest schedule the rest of the way compared to USC and Oklahoma. If we\'re unbeaten after those games, I don\'t see any way we won\'t play for the national championship."
Auburn seems to have been hurt by the fact that it started at 17 in the AP poll, which begs the question: Would the Tigers\' situation be better if the polls weren\'t released until the first week in October, after voters actually had a chance to watch teams play? The early polls create interest among fans, but with so much at stake, it may be time to seriously consider that option.
History suggests voters in both polls tend to be conservative and rarely penalize teams that start in the Top 5 and remain unbeaten. If Auburn runs the table in the SEC, the Tigers can make a strong case with the computers, which can judge them against Oklahoma, whose relatively weak remaining schedule consists of Texas A&M on Saturday, Nebraska, Baylor and Nebraska again in the Big 12 title game. It will be interesting to see whether the writers and coaches would be willing to think outside the box and vote to leap-frog Auburn over the Sooners. Tuberville has received support this week from the two most powerful columnists in the state - Kevin Scarbinsky of the Birmingham News and syndicated columnist Paul Finebaum - with Scarbinsky proclaiming Auburn the best team in the country.
SHORT MEMORIES: Texas A&M coach Dennis Franchione has gone out of his way to muzzle his players from re-hashing the past this week as they prepare for Saturday\'s Big12 game against Oklahoma at College Station.
But it is hard to forget what happened last November in Norman. Oklahoma won, 77-0, and it could have been far worse if coach Bob Stoops didn\'t order his offense to go into a shell in the fourth quarter, constantly running the ball into the middle and replacing eventual Heisman Trophy winner Jason White with backup Pat Thompson at quarterback.
The Sooners finished with 639 yards of offense. The Aggies had 54. "I don\'t really remember the trip back to campus," A&M offensive lineman Aldo De La Garza said. "All I can tell you is that next week, I didn\'t go to school."
That is the closest any of the Aggies came to a painful admission. "I don\'t know how much value there is in rehashing those things," Franchione said. "This is a different team than \'03. It\'s a different situation. They\'re in your memory banks and you can draw from them. You don\'t erase them. For us to talk about them is wasted time."
Besides, the coach has other problems. The Aggies (6-2), ranked No. 22 by the AP, may be a much better team than the one that struggled through a 4-8 season and gave up 485 points last year, but they suffered a major embarrassment last weekend. They committed three costly turnovers and lost to Baylor - 35-34 in overtime.
