Filed under: Auburn, Oregon, BCS Championship Game
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and the SEC winning BCS title games. Auburn University won the fifth consecutive Southeastern Conference national title on Monday night -- a seventh win of the BCS era that means the SEC has now won more BCS titles than the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and Big East combined -- but the Tigers won under a cloud of uncertainty.
Auburn beat Oregon 22-19, winning as rebel outlaws, wild mountain lions backed into a dusty western canyon in the Valley of the Sun. It won without a partisan crowd of orange-clad revelers ever breaking out the vaunted SEC chant that has come to define an era of manifeSECt destiny. But even with the change in victory chants, Auburn did one thing that has always defined the SEC: the Tigers played bone-crushing, hard-nosed defense, stalling a high-powered Oregon offense that was supposed to represent the blueprint for a new era of football.
Sometimes Auburn's defense was jaw-droppingly dominant -- witness Nick Fairley's three sacks and the goal line defensive fourth-down stop that stifled another Oregon drive. And other times they were nasty -- witness Fairley's personal foul and Eric Smith's ugly kicking incident that led to another personal foul penalty -- but always it was focused on making Oregon pay dearly for every yard it gained.
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