Twenty years ago in Miami, a supercharged Southern Cal squad crushed OU 55-19 in the national championship game. A year later, the Trojans lost to Texas in the national title game. The Vince Young Game in the Rose Bowl.
Apologies, Sooners fans. I promise there's a reason for dredging up this double whammy of doom.
It was the last two-year stretch in which an SEC team did not play for a national championship. Two decades later, it might finally happen again.
Texas is the SEC's lone survivor in the College Football Playoff. Texas, which has been in the Southeastern Conference for all of six months, plays Ohio State at 6:30 p.m. Friday at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.
If the Buckeyes beat Bevo (Ohio State is a touchdown favorite), the SEC will be shut out of the championship game in back-to-back years. We'd either have an All-Big Ten title game of Ohio State vs. Penn State, or Ohio State-Notre Dame. One of those matchups one year removed from a Pac-12 vs. Big Ten championship bout last year with the Wolverines winning it all.
Are we seeing the SEC's grip on college football slip?
More: Big Ten, SEC headline college football bowl season's winners and losers
There was a time, you know, before the beasts of the southeast dominated the sport. You don't even have to look back that far.
After Tennessee won the first-ever BCS national championship in 1998, the next four national championship games were SEC-less: Florida State over Virginia Tech in 1999, OU over Florida State in 2000, Miami over Nebraska in 2001 and Ohio State over Miami in 2002.
The SEC reclaimed the crystal ball in 2003, with LSU beating OU, but then came the aforementioned years of 2004 and 2005, when we had back-to-back Big 12 vs. Pac-12 national championship matchups.
The SEC became the supreme conference as we know it starting in 2006. From 2006-12, the SEC won seven straight national championships: Florida '06, LSU '07, Florida '08, Alabama '09, Auburn '10, Alabama '11, Alabama '12.
Florida State broke the streak by beating Auburn in 2013.
In 2014, the first year of the four-team College Football Playoff, we had a Big Ten vs. Pac-12 title game with Ohio State beating Oregon. An SEC team made the championship game every year from 2015 to 2022, with the SEC team winning the title in six of those eight years. Clemson won the other two. Twice, in 2017 and 2021, we had an All-SEC Alabama vs. Georgia championship game.
If Ohio State beats Texas and Penn State beats Notre Dame, the Big Ten could claim that it has the last two national champions (Michigan and Ohio State/Penn State) and the last two runner-ups (Washington and Ohio State/Penn State). Of course, Washington was in the Pac-12 a season ago, but still. Commissioner Tony Petitti and his colleagues in the Big Ten office would have no trouble spinning it.
Top to bottom, the SEC is still unmatched.
Which batch of these teams would you have taken this season?
Those are the Nos. 5 through 10 teams in the Big Ten and the Nos. 5 through 10 teams in the SEC. Give me Group 2 without a second thought.
More: Ohio State, you're the College Football Playoff favorite now. Deal with it.
Big Ten loyalists, though, would point to the conference's 4-1 bowl record against the SEC. Ohio State beat Tennessee in the first round of the playoffs. USC beat Texas A&M in the Las Vegas Bowl. Michigan beat Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl. And Illinois beat South Carolina in the Citrus Bowl. If not for Missouri, which beat Iowa in the Music City Bowl, the SEC would have gone 0-for against the Big Ten in bowl games.
Maybe that means something.
But aside from Ohio State's demolition of Tennessee -- which meant everything -- are we to take anything away from these lesser bowl results?
They're exhibition games in sunny locales where the stakes are low and we can't figure out who's playing and who's not.
But the Big Ten besting the SEC in the College Football Playoffs two years running? Now that's significant. Barring the SEC saving face with Texas winning the national championship, the Big Ten can put together a compelling case that it's the best conference in America.
Not from top to bottom -- that's still the SEC -- but at the tippy top.
Over the last three seasons, six times a current Big Ten school has made the Final Four: Michigan (twice), Ohio State (twice), Penn State and Washington. And that doesn't even include Oregon, which was the No. 1 seed this season as the Big Ten champion.
During that same span, current SEC schools have accounted for four Final Four appearances: Texas (twice), Alabama and Georgia.
Is this a Big Ten blip amid the SEC's dominance or are we actually seeing the power in college football shift from the SEC to the Big Ten?
It's too early to tell. These changes happen slowly in the moment. Only over time are they evident.
But one thing is for sure: If Ohio State beats Texas, the SEC will be watching the national championship game from the couch for the second year in a row. Poor spoiled SEC, right? Big whoop. Two whole years.
But it is big.
It hasn't happened since the days of Jason White, Matt Leinart and Young. When they were sharing backfields with Adrian Peterson, Reggie Bush and Jamaal Charles.
A generation ago, before the SEC assumed college football's throne.
Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at [email protected]. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.