Trojans’ math fuzzy in title claim

Seven months after whining about the college football rankings
system that cost them a chance to earn a unanimous national
championship, the USC Trojans are reveling in the
system’s ambiguity.

During a period when football practice hasn’t even
started, the Trojans laid claim to their 10th title, needing little
more than an out-of-date points formula and an opportunistic
athletic director to accomplish the feat.

Athletic Director Mike Garrett announced July 26 that the school
retroactively would recognize its 1939 football team as a national
champion.

It’s hard for me to say how deserving the team actually
is. I wasn’t around in those times, and neither was Garrett,
but fortunately for all of us there was an economics professor from
Illinois to sort things out.

In 1926, Frank Dickinson, the economics professor, devised a
mathematical system to determine the Big-10 Champion. Notre Dame
coach Knute Rockne liked the formula so much that he wanted
Dickinson to apply it to the whole nation. Dickinson obliged and
predated it so that Rockne’s 1924 and 1925 teams could claim
the title. Sixty-five years later, the Trojans are learning to
follow the Irish’s lead.

Dickinson’s system widely was considered emblematic of the
national champion until The Associated Press began ranking teams in
1936. From then on, most in the football community seemed to
realize that writers who tracked teams on a weekly basis were
probably more qualified to rank teams than a professor tracking
supply and demand functions.

Still, the Dickinson formula remained in place until 1940, when
Minnesota decided to retire the Knute Rockne Intercollegiate
Memorial Trophy awarded for finishing atop that poll. Apparently
the Golden Gophers realized which ranking really mattered. Notre
Dame seemed to get the idea, too.

In 1938, Dickinson’s system awarded the Fighting Irish the
national championship, even though each of the other 12
legitimately recognized polls gave the title to either Tennessee or
Texas Christian. Notre Dame claims to have 11 consensus national
championships, but the 1938 team isn’t one of them.

On the other hand, the Trojans went 8-0-2 in 1939 and are
crowning themselves champions solely based on Dickinson’s
formula, even though Texas A&M finished 11-0 that year and was
ranked first in 10 of the recognized polls. It just goes to show
that some schools have higher standards for their champions than
others.

I would never have known about Dickinson and wouldn’t have
thought twice about USC’s “˜10′ national
championships if its athletic department had claimed the title
immediately after the fact. But it seems strange that the school
waited so long.

USC Sports Information Director Tim Tessalone politely explained
that various individuals recently contacted the athletic
department, insisting the Trojans should claim the 1939 title. He
went on to say the athletic department comprehensively researched
Dickinson’s validity and determined its own claims to be
true.

Somehow, the team had just been overlooked for over half a
century, which left me a little confused.  

But the people who must be really confused are the members of
the five other Trojan teams that also finished atop a legitimate
poll but have not been recognized as national champions by their
school.

Take the 1933 squad, for example. The Williamson poll, a power
ratings system created by a geologist and member of the Sugar Bowl
committee, had USC at the top of the year-end rankings.
Unfortunately for that team, the athletic department does not
consider the selector all-encompassing enough. That or the school
wants to send a message that geologists don’t understand
football like economists do.

And then there’s the recent 2002 Trojan squad led by
Carson Palmer that finished No. 1 in three different polls. Perhaps
Garrett eventually will get around to declaring three national
championships for that team. Just wait another 65 years.

E-mail Finley at afinley@media.ucla.edu if you think UCLA
should declare its 1997 football team a national champion.

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