Final BCS picture is still unsettling

MIAMI — Was it really that bad?

Didn't it all, in the end, after five months, a thousand howls and 34 bowls, work out for the conspiracy theorists, playoff advocates and, most of all, Florida?

Gators Coach Urban Meyer, sleepless after a night of celebrating his team's Bowl Championship Series victory against Oklahoma, spent Friday morning posing with national title trophies presented by the USA Today voting coaches, the Associated Press and the Football Writers Assn. of America.

Meyer put his hands on something called the MacArthur Bowl, given out by the National Football Foundation since 1959.

Meyer acted like the guest of honor at a bridal shower.

What's in that box?

He wasn't even sure what the MacArthur was.

"I'd like to read about this because our name is on it twice," Meyer said. " . . . to think that our name is forever etched on that great trophy, it's my responsibility to learn more about it and make sure our players learn it because they're on it."

This is what makes college football so insanely fantastic . . . and frustrating.

You would have thought Friday that Florida, the movie, swept the Academy Awards.

Except, backstage, there was this massive food fight.

There were no final BCS standings to blame -- there never are; the standings simply help set up the bowl matchups -- only the final renderings of the USA Today coaches' and AP indexes.

Florida finished first in both polls ahead of three schools -- USC, Texas and Utah -- which thought they deserved some of Florida's hardware in a year where controversy was the real No. 1.

Utah, the only 13-0 team, got a nice pat on the head from the media members, who acknowledged the Utes may have gotten a raw deal here by voting them No. 2, ahead of USC and Texas.

Utah received a nice parting gift: 16 first-place votes.

Utes Coach Kyle Whittingham was moved . . . almost.

"The word 'national' champion is really a relative word," Whittingham said in a teleconference. "That's only an opinion. Until there's a playoff, that's all it's going to be."

USC finished No. 2 in the coaches' poll -- why didn't the coaches just poke the Trojans in the eye with a stick?

"I don't think you know who the best team is," Trojans Coach Pete Carroll said. "You just know which team got the most votes."

Texas thought it should have played for the national title instead of Oklahoma. The Longhorns finished No. 3 in the coaches' poll and actually dropped one spot, to No. 4, in the final AP index.