Coming Up Roses, Baby

So Texas won the 2005-06 Rose Bowl over USC. Pretty thrilling game, with Vince Young running in the deciding score. Wow.

Unfortunately, the game will be marred by controversy. Just like that OSU-Miami Championship game awhile back, with the late flag towards the end.

In this case, there were two critical calls:

(1) Vince Young's knee was down when he lateraled to another Texas player for Texas' first score, so the score shouldn't have counted--however, the play wasn't reviewed; and
(2) In the drive to bring Texas to within five points, a Texas player caught the ball and was hit. The ball came loose and was recovered by USC. However, the play gets reviewed, and they said the pass was incomplete.

The first probably wouldn't have mattered, because it was early in the game and Young would've probably run the score in anyway. However, the second one could've sealed the deal for USC--the Texas defense was sucking wind, and a TD would've made it a 19 point game (I think--someone correct me if I'm wrong).

You can bet USC fans are going to be crying and whining about this--just like Miami fans were a couple of years ago. However, USC made several bonehead decisions in the last two minutes or so, and were unable to defend against Vince Young.

Congratulations to Texas for being the National Champs!