Florida makes some history

With their resounding win over Ohio State in Monday's BCS National Championship, the Florida Gators became the first U.S. college in history to hold the titles in men's basketball and football at the same time, an incredible feat by any measure.

There is no more fabled story in sports, except maybe that of the triumphant underdog, than the seemingly unbeatable individual or team. Roger Federer cannot even claim to have done what Rod Laver did (twice) in winning the tennis Grand Slam; Steffi Graf topped that with four majors and the Olympics in 1988. Tiger Woods hasn't matched Bobby Jones' 1930 golf Grand Slam. It has been nearly 30 years since a horse won the U.S. Triple Crown; the Treble is a rare feat at the top tier of club soccer; no team has ever won more than two consecutive Super Bowls. But has the result by Florida - for one team or individual to hold two major championships in different sports, without crossover of champions like Carl Lewis as a sprinter and jumper - ever truly been achieved before?

The U.S. college sports system is unique in that it is the world's most elite amateur competition for young athletes, attracting stars across a plethora of sports and receiving intense media coverage which sees the college game often overshadow its professional equivalents. This is no more the case than in men's football and basketball, where games are routinely broadcast to millions of fans and are picked apart as much as NFL and NBA playoff matches. With hundreds of different universities and colleges competing at the Division 1-A level, and the ever present powerhouses like Duke, North Carolina, UCLA and UConn in hoops, winning a championship requires not just skill but also luck and timing, particularly as the best players from each team are inevitably tempted by the riches of the professional ranks.

Besides, the college system works to ensure that a school must produce a nearly flawless season to win it all; one loss is the difference between the trophy and also-ran status. In basketball, a team must win every game it plays in March Madness to survive the knock out format designed to cut down pretenders and unearth true winners. In football, you needn't bother thinking about your place in history unless you come very close to the unbeaten regular season demanded so that you can just enter the debate about who will earn a place in the National Championship battle. Becoming the best team in the country is a rare honour, and many of the greatest coaches in college may win just two or three titles in their careers. For one school to hold both these crowns simultaneously is an astonishing thing, as shown by the fact that this is the first time in history it has been done.

What the Gators have managed must rank as one of the best years in sport for an organisation in recent memory. The football team navigated through the SEC, the most competitive conference in the nation, and played against even more established and historically dominant programs with the finest players and coaches (witness Nick Saban leaving the NFL to coach the University of Alabama, a public school, for US$32 million!). In both sports, Florida has beaten Ohio State teams with much greater expectations placed upon them, and in the process has upstaged two bonafide talents - Heisman Trophy winner Trop Smith (about whom I have already waxed poetic) and Greg Oden, consensus selection as #1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft and as a "once in a generation player" - while only having one player (Joakim Noah) among its ranks who is generating any real buzz of his own.

The 2006 run of the University of Florida Gators will not enter the type of sports folklore as Lance Armstrong's Tour de France dominance, the Michael Jordan era in Chicago, or the skills displayed by Pele's Brazilian teams in the 1950s and 1960s. However, it must be recognised as possibly the best ever record compiled by a single team across multiple sports in a single year. And who knows whether this argument will seem any stronger by 2008, as the Gators have legitimate chances to defend their titles in basketball and football over the coming year.

Heisman talk: Smith underrated?

When did upside suddenly begin to trump proven worth? The two U.S. leagues which rely on the draft process - the NFL and NBA - have been overrun by pundits discussing how much potential raw players will have in five years, or once they have gained 30 pounds.

Troy Smith, soon to be crowned the 2006 Heisman Trophy winner, has led his team to an undefeated season, and won the best regular season match-up of any U.S. sports league in decades, perhaps history. The coverage that the OSU/Michigan clash on November 18 received was incredible, and no amount of athleticism shown in an NFL combine - 40 yard dashes, vertical leaps, strength tests - can give a better insight of a player's readiness for the professional ranks than the pressure of the biggest game in the history of sport's greatest rivalry.

He has shouldered the pressure of expectation at OSU in 2006, the level of which wouldn't be matched by starting at quarterback for most NFL teams. Smith, like Matt Leinart and Vince Young, has demonstrated that he can handle constant media attention and the burden of favouritism in every game, and it seems that he would have little difficulty in a high-stakes football situation like playing in New York, or leading the Chicago Bears after their years of QB disasters. (Dream scenario, anyone? Urlacher and Co. get the 3-and-out consistently and happily turn the reigns over to a Heisman-winning QB on offence).

Analysts have predicted that Brady Quinn, who has succeeded in a similarly intense college environment, will be selected in the top three in the 2007 draft, but see Smith's height possibly keeping him in the late first round. Some even suggest he will fall to the second round!

There is no rarer player in the current NFL than a gifted quarterback who is able to maintain composure at the critical moments. The majority aren't even capable of holding their starting jobs long enough to get to such moments. It is obviously premature to suggest that Smith will emulate Tom Brady in his ability to manage a Super Bowl offence because of his college record, but surely he warrants a selection by one of the teams in the league which lacks a true leader?

Home is where the heart is

The surprise in the sports media over the last days at news that football coaches have turned down major openings at the Universities of Miami and Alabama seems to be tied to a belief that sport is all about prestige.

Why would Joakim Noah stay at Florida after passsing up certain NBA lottery selection as a national champion?

Why would Kevin Garnett stay loyal to the state of Minnesota when he could work a deal to Chicago or Philadelphia or Denver?

Why would Roger Clemens consider retirement instead of one last year and $20 million more in the spotlight of the Yankees dugout?

Once a person has climbed to the peak of their sport, or the competition that they're a part of, it would seem logical to cash in on your success and play in the biggest market or on the biggest stage. But the sense of satisfaction that comes with working hard to create your own rewards cannot be matched by the fleeting glory of riding the wave with an already storied team. While no doubt Gary Payton loved being a (bit)part of the 2005 Miami Heat championship team, do you question whether he would have preferred beating Jordan's Bulls in 1995/96 as the Sonics' undisputed leader?

The decisions by the coaches of Rutgers and West Virginia to turn down the jobs at these two major college football programs comes because they are much prouder of their work in building strong teams from the ground up. West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez had to choose whether to jump ship from a school which he attended and in the last two seasons has guided to 11-1 and 10-2 records in order to pocket $12 million to save the reputation of a faltering powerhouse, but the modern reality of sport is that you can now win anywhere (your 2003 World Series champion Florida Marlins?) and that there is no greater accomplishment than hand-crafting a winning team without the support of winning history or a blank check book.

Loyalty is a powerful commodity, and these two coaches should be respected for their desires to stay and create their own legacies rather than riding the coat tails of Miami or Alabama. Equally, it is much better to see Miami promote from within in hiring their own defensive coordinator and former star LB Randy Shannon to call plays instead of heaping money on an established coaching brand.

After all, there is no more admired coach at the college level than Joe Paterno, who has led the Penn State Nittany Lions to two national championships and five undefeated seasons over 41 years. Would he have been so well loved if he'd left to coach Michigan instead because they were more certain to win each year?