It’s official.
The Tennessee Volunteers retained their No. 1 ranking in the final Bowl
Championship Series rankings on Sunday and will meet the No. 2-ranked
Florida State Seminoles on Jan. 4 in the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz.
“We’ve been on the edge of playing in a national championship game and now
we get a chance to do it,” said UT head coach Phillip Fulmer.
“I think Florida State versus Tennessee is a great matchup,” said Fiesta
Bowl President Herman Frazier.
The winner, in all likelihood, will win the national championship. If it’s
Tennessee, it’s final. The Vols will be crowned champions.
However, if the Seminoles defeat the Vols and Ohio State beats Texas A&M in
the Sugar Bowl, there could be a repeat of last season’s title split
between Nebraska and Michigan.
The ESPN/USA Today coaches poll has already said that it will vote
the winner of the Fiesta Bowl as its No. 1 team.
However, the writers who vote in the Associated Press poll have not
committed themselves to voting that game’s winner No. 1 in the final
poll.
Therefore, there still are three teams with a realistic shot at winning at
least a part of the championship, even though previous unbeatens UCLA and
Kansas State went down on Saturday.
Shortly after Tennessee’s 24-14 win in the Southeastern Conference
Championship Game on Saturday, the talk in the bowels of the Georgia Dome
was about the Vols’ upcoming meeting with the 11-1 Seminoles.
“It’s great. We get to play another Bowden this year,” said junior center
Spencer Riley, referring to FSU coach Bobby, whose son Terry was the coach
at Auburn when the Vols beat the Tigers 17-9 in October.
“It’s like a dream come true for me,” said running back Travis Henry.
“We’ve just got to go down to Arizona and play Tennessee football.”
Only one player on the Tennessee roster has ever played against Florida
State. Defensive tackle Darwin Walker was a member of a North Carolina
State team that lost big to the Seminoles.
“It was a blowout, but it’ll be a totally different story here,” he said.
“They’re a good team, but we’re gonna step up and play them as hard as we
can.”
