I think that if Oklahoma had turned in a decent performance in that game, they wouldn't have been jumped in the final poll of the '04 season. If Bama had blown out Texas this year, you likely would have seen Boise in the second spot. Even with the BCS title game, it's still a beauty contest. The National Championship is still determined by a vote. The only guarantee is that the winner is elected number one in the Coaches Poll. There is no guarantee that the loser of the game is awarded the second spot. I understand you have your agenda here, but there really is no gray area.
It doesn't really matter, though. Who the hell cares about an ex post facto championship?
I don't have an agenda. I have always said that I thought it was bullshit that AU didn't get to play in that game. You can look that up. However, they didn't. I just don't see how, in this day and age, you could hand a championship to a team that didn't even play in the game. If you're not going to vacate it, you have to hand it to the team that actually played in the game. It would be like if the NCAA made a team forfeit a bunch of wins, and instead of recording it as a win for the other team, just randomly picked teams to hand out those wins to.
In a foreit situation, the other team records a win. So, hypothetically, if USC has to forfeit that game, then Oklahoma is the technical winner, even though they lost on the field. And if they are the technical winner, how are you not going to hand them the NC, but hand it to a team that didn't even play in the game? Now, if USC is forced to vacate the win, then the NC will simply be vacated that season. Remember, there is a difference between vacating and forfeiting.