Adams: Chizik, Kiffin matched talent

College football's game of the century seems "centuries ago," Auburn coach Gene Chizik said Sunday.

But Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin talks about the Southern California-Texas national champion-ship game as though it was last Saturday.

Kiffin and Chizik, whose new teams will meet Saturday at Neyland Stadium, were opposing coordinators in one of college football's most storied games. Kiffin was USC's offensive coordinator, and Chizik orchestrated Texas' defense.

But that championship game was more about players than tacticians.

Texas quarterback Vince Young rushed for 200 yards and passed for 267 in Texas' 41-38 upset, which denied the Trojans an unprecedented third consecutive national championship.

The Trojans countered Young's one-man show with a four-pronged attack.

Matt Leinart completed 29 of 40 passes. Reggie Bush averaged better than 6 yards per carry and scored on a spectacular 26-yard run. LenDale White rushed for 124 yards. Dwayne Jarrett had 10 catches.

Kiffin doesn't remember all that went right for the Trojans as vividly as he remembers two of the plays that went wrong.

"Reggie going down on a 50-yard completion and trying to flip the ball back when he turns it over in the first quarter," Kiffin said. "It was a big momentum switch.

"It was just a reminder that as good a player as you can be and as much as we get on them, sometimes guys can get out of whack in a big-time game. He had never tried to do anything like that."

The other setback was more conventional. Texas stopped White on a fourth-and-1 carry that, if successful, would have enabled the Trojans to run out the clock and clinch the victory.

"For years, the fourth-and-1 (has) hounded me," Kiffin said. "We were 18-for-18 in short-yardage that season. We had been a great short-yardage team."

One more yard, and Kiffin would have an altogether different appreciation for the game.

"When you lose the game, it's hard to look at a game as being the greatest game ever," he said. "But it was an unbelievable game with so many great plays being made.

"There are so many guys playing in that game playing in the NFL now."

And many of them were tools in Kiffin's offense.

Bush was the second player taken in the 2006 NFL draft, and Leinart was the 10th pick. Nine other Trojans were selected in the same draft.

But one draft doesn't reflect all the talent on that offense.

n Mark Sanchez, the third-string quarterback, is now starting for the New York Jets as a rookie.

n Five receivers, including tight ends, eventually became second- or third-round draft picks.

n Four offensive linemen off that team are NFL starters.

n All 11 offensive starters were drafted.

They were very talented and very well coached," Chizik said. "They were one of the best offenses in the history of college football."

Time hasn't changed that perception. In fact, no matter how well Kiffin recruits at UT, he likely won't assemble an offense as talented as the one at his command in 2005.

Chizik's defense also had star power. Fifteen players from that defense were drafted or signed as free agents over the next four years; eleven of them begin this season on NFL rosters.

Texas wasn't short on offense, either. Young triggered an offense that averaged 50 points per game and scored fewer than 41 points only once in 12 games. Twelve other players from that offense began the 2009 season on NFL rosters.

You won't see that kind of talent on display Saturday night. Kiffin and Chizik are both rebuilding programs.

But they know what the finished product should like. They saw it four years ago.

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at 865-342-6284 or adamsj@knoxnews.com.