Editor’s note: This is the fourth in an occasional series examining the people, events and impacts of Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship season 20 years later. The previous stories can be found here.

Columnist Dan Le Batard wrote in the Jan. 2, 2001, editions of the Miami Herald that the next day’s Orange Bowl shaped up to be a “fraud of a national championship game.”

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It was the first real debate of the Bowl Championship Series era after its first two seasons went off without a hitch.

The final rankings the BCS formula spit out on Dec. 3, 2000, pitted undefeated No. 1 Oklahoma versus No. 2 Florida State. They caused controversy because No. 3 Miami had beaten Florida State 27-24 and, like FSU, had only one loss. The Hurricanes’ defeat came against Pac-10 champion and fourth-ranked Washington, which also had only one loss.

But most of the disagreement centered on Miami and Florida State. Miami ranked second in both human polls used in the BCS formula, but many of the BCS computer rankings had Florida State No. 1, even above OU. The Seminoles’ schedule, deemed more difficult than Miami’s, also factored into the final rankings.

“I feel good about our position,” Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops said the day the final rankings were revealed. “I don’t have to answer questions for a month and defend why we’re in the national championship game.”

Florida State coach Bobby Bowden did have to answer those questions, even with his program’s standing as a bona fide powerhouse. FSU won the 1999 title, and with its Orange Bowl bid had reached the BCS title game in each of the system’s first three seasons.

Florida State entered the national title game as an 11.5-point favorite, while Miami earned a Sugar Bowl bid against Florida. Worries persisted virtually the entire month of December about a split national champion — the very thing the BCS was designed to avoid — because the Associated Press retained its right to crown its own champion. Had Florida State and Miami both won their bowl games, that almost certainty would have happened.

Twenty years later, Oklahoma players and coaches say they don’t think much about the missed opportunity to play Miami and what might have happened. The Sooners got their shot at the national championship and won it, so why would they waste time thinking about a team that didn’t make it? Some Miami players, though, are still hot about the injustice. Others have moved on and have fond memories of beating Florida in the Sugar Bowl.

The controversy waned after Oklahoma won the Orange Bowl 13-2 with a dominating defensive performance. The Seminoles’ only points came because of a bad punt snap late in the fourth quarter.

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But Miami certainly had a fair argument that it should have been in that contest. The 2000 Hurricanes were loaded with future NFL talent, including names such as Santana Moss, Reggie Wayne, Bryant McKinnie, Willis McGahee, Ed Reed, Jonathan Vilma and Phillip Buchanan. The bulk of the 2000 Miami team would win the next year’s national title on a team that is widely regarded as one of the greatest in college football history.

The 2000 controversy marked the first of many fiery BCS debates that, in 2014, ultimately led to today’s College Football Playoff, which has its four-team field chosen entirely by humans.

Brett Romberg, Miami’s starting center in 2000, is now a businessman and local radio voice in South Florida, and he remembers exactly where he was the day he and his teammates found out they would not be playing in the national championship.

The offensive line had gathered at right tackle Joaquin Gonzalez’s older brother’s house to watch NFL games.

“We thought we had a really good opportunity to go to the national championship game minus the whole little screw-up at the beginning, obviously at Washington,” Romberg said. “But we beat Florida State. So we’re all sitting there watching it … and we dared (left guard) Sherko (Haji-Rasouli) $50 to let us shave his whole body.

“So we’re sitting there, like a bunch of meatheads, trimming Sherko with clippers, as he’s standing there in front of us on a chair, trying to keep things light. And then somebody doesn’t take care of their business, and they voted us short by whatever the thing was. And, to be honest with you, was I pissed? Yeah, I think we all were. But that’s what catapulted us into giving University of Florida the ass-kicking that they got — twice that week, actually, to be honest with you.”

All these years later, one might imagine getting passed over for a team they beat still sticks in the craw of the Hurricanes. It certainly does for the fan base and probably the coaches, but the players? Not as much as one might think.

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The infamous Bourbon Street brawl with the Gators before the Sugar Bowl allowed the Hurricanes to blow off some steam. Beating Florida in the game days later added another layer of satisfaction for Miami, which had not played the Gators in 13 years after UF’s athletic department decided to back out of the annual rivalry.

Even star linebacker Dan Morgan, who went on to win the Butkus, Nagurski and Bednarik awards that season and is now the Buffalo Bills’ director of player personnel and never got to play for a national championship at Miami, said he let go of his frustrations some time ago over being snubbed.

“All of us were shocked. It’s just crazy that you can beat a team in the same year and then you both have one loss, but they go. So we were just perplexed,” Morgan said. “We didn’t get the whole BCS thing. And honestly, I don’t think the BCS knew exactly what they were doing. So it’s just one of those things where we’re like, ‘All right, whatever.’ We basically got to go play Florida, and that’s fine.

“We were really out to prove that game we were the best in the country. Obviously, you can say that you are, but until you actually play (Oklahoma) who knows what would have happened. But all I know is that we had a lot of momentum going into that (Sugar Bowl) game and a lot of confidence to think that we definitely would have been more competitive than Florida State that year.”

He said he remembers watching the national title game and thinking Miami could’ve beaten OU.

“Obviously, you feel you can beat everybody,” Morgan said. “But definitely watching the game, you felt that.”

What’s evident from Miami’s point of view is the Seminoles caught a huge break from the computers.

“Florida State had no business being in that f—ing game,” said Gonzalez, who went from being a walk-on at Miami to the Campbell Trophy winner and a seventh-round draft pick of the Cleveland Browns. He spent four years in the league and is now a businessman, husband and father. “I mean, they got shellacked. It sucked. I remember watching that game and just saying ‘That should be us.’”

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The snub put a chip on Miami’s shoulder in 2001. The Canes didn’t want to leave any doubt, and they put a whooping on every opponent they played except Virginia Tech. They crushed 14th ranked Syracuse 59-0, beat Florida State by 22, won at Penn State by 26, destroyed 12th-ranked Washington 65-7, then cruised to a 37-14 win against fourth-ranked Nebraska in the 2001 BCS title game.

In the end, seeing other teams get slighted by the BCS system in the years to come also lessened the blow of being left out of the 2000 championship game.

“It kind of came full circle because the following year we won the championship against Nebraska and everybody thought that Oregon should have played against us rather than Nebraska,” Gonzalez said. “When I went to the East-West Shrine Bowl, Joey Harrington was my roommate and he was the quarterback for Oregon. He kept telling me, ‘Man, we should have played you guys. We would have won the national championship. Our offense was unstoppable.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, f—ing please, bro.’ Joey’s a good guy. I got along with him well. But I never felt that way.”

Similarly, the 2000 Sooners don’t feel like there would have been a different result with a different opponent.

Seth Littrell was a senior Oklahoma fullback and team captain in 2000 and is now in his fifth season as North Texas’ head coach. The Muskogee, Okla., native also played on some bad Oklahoma teams in the late 1990s.

“We had a special team,” Littrell said. “I was part of some Oklahoma teams that didn’t have the success, too, and that was probably a blessing because I learned that it only takes four to five guys that can either make or break a team, with great leadership, great positivity, great work ethic. It can also take only four to five guys to ruin a team.

“I think our chemistry is what set us apart. I don’t know that we were the most talented team — actually, I know we weren’t the most talented team in the country. But we did have the best football team.”

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Linebacker Torrance Marshall, an OU team captain and Orange Bowl MVP that season, is from Miami and offered a simple message for anyone who isn’t over it.

“Uh, we woulda won,” Marshall said. “I would’ve preferred to play Miami because they beat Florida State. But I also tell Miami fans that y’all should’ve beat Boston College or whoever the f— it was. Don’t be mad at me or our team because you didn’t handle your business. If you wanna be mad at somebody, be mad at yourself or be mad at Florida State. We didn’t have any L’s.”

Had Miami and Oklahoma met in the 2000 BCS championship it would have added a new chapter to a brief but great rivalry between the teams in the 1980s, starring colorful characters such as Oklahoma’s Brian Bosworth and Miami’s Jerome Brown talking trash and fanning the flames before, during and after games.

And it wasn’t just the players who had beef.

Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer were University of Arkansas teammates, something that got a lot of attention in 1994 when Jones — the Dallas Cowboys owner — replaced Johnson with Switzer as head coach. But the relationship between Switzer and Johnson goes well beyond that. Johnson was Oklahoma State’s head coach from 1979 to 1983, with Switzer’s Sooners winning all five Bedlam matchups.

Johnson left Oklahoma State to take the Miami job.

In his 1990 memoir “Bootlegger’s Boy,” Switzer wrote this of his former Arkansas teammate: “Maybe if I’d known then what grief Jimmy Johnson was going to cause me, I would have run him off the squad and seen to it that he became a railroad engineer or a landscape artist — anything but a football coach.”

Oklahoma and Miami met in the regular season in 1985 and 1986, then again in the next season’s Orange Bowl. Johnson’s Hurricanes won all of them. In 1985, Oklahoma went on to win the national championship despite the regular-season home loss to Miami.

Just in case anyone forgot how good Jerome Brown was, here’s him breaking Troy Aikman’s ankle. That center was baffled when he went to block and he hit air. Jerome was by him in a split second. Unbelievable talent. RIP pic.twitter.com/PPUbPuTfvH

— Canes Legacy (@CanesLegacy) May 22, 2020

In that game, the late, great Brown from Miami changed the direction of OU’s program when he broke the ankle of starting quarterback Troy Aikman in the first half. Switzer replaced Aikman with Jamelle Holieway and the Sooners went back to running the option instead of throwing the football. Aikman left for UCLA and a Hall of Fame NFL career in Dallas, playing at first for Johnson and later Switzer.

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The Sooners’ only three losses between 1985 and 1987 came against Miami, and the latter two directly cost Oklahoma national championships.

But the Hurricanes were a thorn in Oklahoma’s side even before the Johnson-Switzer years. In 1973, No. 6 Oklahoma won 24-20 against a Miami team that finished 5-6.

Two years later, No. 1-ranked Oklahoma won a 20-17 nailbiter at Miami. The 1975 Sooners won the national title and are regarded as one of the best teams in school history. The 1975 Hurricanes went 2-8.

Following that three-year stretch in the 1980s, Miami and Oklahoma didn’t play again until a 2007 and 2009 home-and-home, which the teams split. Miami leads the all-time series 4-3, and there are no future non-conference games scheduled between the schools.

So a 2000 Oklahoma-Miami national championship — and in the Orange Bowl, of all games — would have been a historic matchup just oozing with storylines. But the BCS computers had other ideas.

Gonzalez is convinced the Hurricanes would have scored more than the two points Florida State did against Oklahoma. In fact, he thinks the Hurricanes would have dominated the Sooners.

“Oklahoma was a big defensive team that year. Bob Stoops had them playing well. I like Coach Stoops. His brother, Mark, was our defensive backs coach that year,” Gonzalez said. “But again, we were really good on defense, and we had so much f—ing offensive firepower it was going to be tough for them to stop. Again, they played everybody that really was a one-sided offense. They didn’t see anybody like us. There’s no doubt in my mind we would have kicked their ass.”

Miami and Florida State had two of the most prolific offenses in college football. FSU led the country in total offense (549 yards per game) and had the third-ranked scoring offense (42.42 points per game). Miami ranked fifth in total offense (460.82 yards per game) and was second in scoring (42.64).

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The difference between Miami and Florida State’s offenses in 2000? The Hurricanes had five future first-round picks. The Seminoles had Chris Weinke, the Heisman Trophy winner, but didn’t have any first-rounders on offense. Their best future pro then was sophomore wide receiver Anquan Bolden, a three-time Pro Bowl selection.

In all, eight offensive starters for Miami were drafted, including All-Pro running back Clinton Portis.

2000 Oklahoma-Miami comparison

(national ranking)

Oklahoma ranked eighth in total defense and seventh in scoring defense (16.0 points per game). But outside of safety Roy Williams, a five-time Pro Bowl selection, the only other starters on the Sooners 2000 defense to get drafted were third-round picks in linebackers Marshall and Rocky Calmus.

“To be honest with you, I think I actually enjoyed how silly of a performance both teams (in the Orange Bowl) put up,” Romberg said. “I was almost like, ‘It serves you right, BCS, I hope this was the worst-rated BCS Championship ever.’ I was a little bit perturbed about that, and I’m glad it didn’t work out that well for them. But do I think that we could have given Oklahoma a whole handful lot more than what those other clowns did? Yeah. There’s no doubt about it.”

Quarterback Josh Heupel became a sixth-round pick of the Miami Dolphins in 2001 but never played a game in the league. Running back Quentin Griffin, OU’s featured running back and leader in rushing and catches, was a fourth-round pick who made five career NFL starts in four seasons. Wide receiver Andre Woolfolk was the only first-round pick on the 2000 Sooners who played a significant role. He was drafted as a defensive back and made 12 career NFL starts.

The Hurricanes defense, on the other hand, featured four starters who were first-round picks and two more who were backups: defensive tackle William Joseph, linebackers Morgan and Vilma, cornerbacks Mike Rumph and Buchanan and Reed, a Hall of Fame safety. In all, seven Miami defensive starters in 2000 were drafted.

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Oklahoma felt disrespect coming from all corners in the month leading up to the Orange Bowl. The media constantly questioned how the Sooners would possibly stop the athletically superior Seminoles.

Stoops recalled a dinner a few nights before the Orange Bowl for coaches and wives. His young, brash staff walked in and encountered Florida State’s staff, led by the venerable Bowden.

“We come in all loud and kinda causing a little bit of a ruckus but enjoying the experience,” Stoops said. “Maybe a little too much. I think they all looked around like, ‘These guys are either too dumb to know what’s in front of them, or maybe they don’t care.’

“And either way, they didn’t seem to like it. I think it bothered them.”

Stoops had spent three seasons as Florida defensive coordinator and knew Florida State well. He knew the Seminoles players thrived on getting in opponents’ heads.

“Don’t take any of their sh—,” Stoops told his Sooners.

And the Sooners didn’t. Oklahoma held Florida State to 301 yards of offense, including only 27 yards rushing, in the Orange Bowl victory.

“We just had more talent,” Morgan said of what might have been a Miami-Oklahoma game. “It would have been nice to obviously to play in that game and have the chance to beat Oklahoma. But it turned out the way that it did.”

After all that transpired in 2000, with the talent on the field and the history between the programs, no matter what the players say 20 years later, one question remains.

What would have happened if Oklahoma and Miami had played?

The situation practically begged for running the matchup through WhatIfSports.com and seeing what it came up with.

Simulating 100 games between the 2000 versions of Miami and Oklahoma, the result is clear, and oddly enough, the computers were on Miami’s side this time. Miami won 65 of the games; Oklahoma won 35.

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The average final score: Miami 28.93, Oklahoma 22.79.

Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey was named game MVP in the most simulations (31), with Miami’s James Jackson (29) and Heupel (21) behind him.

But computers have already had their say. What do The Athletic’s writers think would have happened?

Manny Navarro, Miami beat writer: The one thing that has to be taken into account about the 2000 BCS championship game was that it was played in Miami, and that would have definitely helped the Hurricanes. They’ve fared far better in New Year’s Day bowl games played in their backyard (5-2) than away from home (4-6 in Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Rose) since winning the program’s first national championship in 1983. On the field, Miami clearly had more talent than Oklahoma. Those two factors would have propelled the Canes to victory. But it would have been a tight game and not a blowout. Oklahoma didn’t have as many NFL stars as Miami, but it had a really good college football team, and it would not have been easy for The U to beat that group. Miami would have won 24-17.

Jason Kersey, Oklahoma beat writer: Yes, Miami had far superior NFL talent and the game took place in the Hurricanes’ backyard. And by the time the Orange Bowl came around,  Heupel’s arm was badly injured. Maybe this will come off as naive or corny, but it’s just hard to believe that anybody would beat the 2000 Oklahoma Sooners. Florida State, too, had far superior talent, and Oklahoma’s defense completely shut the Seminoles down. The 2000 Sooners have always felt like a real team of destiny. Further, there’s no way Marshall would let Oklahoma lose to anyone in his hometown — especially Miami. Oklahoma would have won 17-10.

Stewart Mandel, national college football writer: I covered Miami’s breakthrough win over Florida State that year (Wide Right III) and Oklahoma’s Big 12 title game. I also covered that weird 13-2 game. I’ll never understand how Florida State melted down so badly that night, though top WR Snoop Minnis’ suspension didn’t help. I hate to slight that great OU team, but Miami was just so much more talented and explosive. Also, while Miami was peaking by the end of the season, Oklahoma’s offense wasn’t the same once Heupel got hurt. Miami wins handily, 27-10.

(Photo of J.T. Thatcher after the Orange Bowl at Pro Player Stadium in Miami: Brian Bahr / Allsport)

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