Oregon Ducks finish season ranked No. 2 behind Alabama
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Alabama is No. 1 at being No. 1.
The Crimson Tide (13-1) was voted national champion by The Associated Press for the ninth time, more than any other program in college football, after routing Notre Dame 42-14 on Monday night.
Notre Dame, No. 1 coming into the BCS championship, dropped to No. 4.
Oregon (12-1) finished second, matching its best final ranking from 2001. Ohio State (12-0), the only undefeated team in major college football but banned from the postseason because of NCAA sanctions, was third. Georgia and Texas A&M tied for fifth to cap another banner season for the Southeastern Conference.
The Tide entered the title game with as many AP titles as the Fighting Irish, and emphatically broke the tie for first. It's Alabama's second straight title and third in four years. The only other team to win three AP titles in four seasons was Notre Dame from 1946-49.
"It won't sink in until everything settles down," Alabama senior linebacker Nico Johnson said. "To play for three national championships in my career ... that's special."
Alabama finished No. 1 five times under Paul "Bear" Bryant during his 25 years as coach, and Gene Stalling coached to the Crimson Tide to another championship in 1992.
Saban is now more than halfway to matching the Bear in six seasons as Alabama coach.
The Tide received all 59 of the first-place votes in the final media poll of the season, and will be a candidate to start next season No. 1. This season Alabama started second, was ranked No. 1 for 10 weeks before losing to Texas A&M in November and falling to fourth. The Tide quickly moved back to No. 2 and for the second straight season beat No. 1 in the BCS title game to finish on top.
Alabama is the seventh straight SEC team to finish No. 1 and the toughest conference in college football also became the first league to have five of top 10 teams in the final rankings.
South Carolina was No. 8 and Florida was ninth.
Texas A&M, in its first season in the SEC, finished with its best final AP rankings since 1956.
The SEC also matched a record with seven teams in the final Top 25. LSU was 14th and Vanderbilt was 23rd. The SEC and Big Ten both finished with seven teams in the final rankings of the 1999 season.
Stanford was seventh and Florida State was 10th.
The Seminoles' ACC rival, Clemson, was 11th, followed by Kansas State and Louisville.
After LSU, was Oklahoma at No. 15. Utah State is the highest ranked team from a conference without a BCS automatic qualifying bid. The Aggies won the Western Athletic Conference in its last season as a football league.
Northwestern was 17th, Boise State was No. 18, Texas was 19th and Oregon State 20th.
The final five were San Jose State, another WAC team, Northern Illinois from the Mid-American Conference, Vandy, Michigan and Nebraska.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press
2nd place. Didn't someone say that 2nd place is just the first loser? Or that it is like kissing your sister. Or something. Can't be very satisfying to be saying, "Wait 'til next year" again.
I'm not a fan of either team, even less so for Oregon, and I haven't any use for Kelly, Â but, when the top two teams play, in any other contest, the winner is 1st and the loser is 2nd. Â Just shows how screwed up the API Â is. Â This is no different than the Super Bowl loser being put in third or fourth place. Â The whole idea of the BCS was to take the BS out of college football. Â Guess it didn't work.
Since both of these teams are academic instead of semi-pro, I wonder which team's average GPA is higher. I betcha it's UO! Go Ducks!
Last night's game proved that Notre Lame didn't belong in the NC Game. So over-rated.
@scoreboard I agree.
@scoreboard Notre Dame was an extremely lucky 8-4 team that went 12-0. At least one of Boise's unbeaten teams were more worthy to play for a title than the Golden Domers of this season.
 @Portlander29  @scoreboard Exactly! Even with the loss to Stanford, Oregon should have been in that game. I guarantee that it would have a lot closer. In fact, I think Oregon would have beat Alabama or Notre Dame. Alabama would have been close (maybe a touchdown difference) but Oregon would have throttled the Domers.
Yeah, Ducks. I would like to see the two teams play... Would be very interesting
 @lizz Ducks over Alabama by a touchdown. Ducks over Notre Lame by 3-4 touchdowns.