How Would The Auburn Tigers Have Fared Against The USC Trojans in 2004?

I thought it would be interesting to take look at how the 2004 Auburn Tigers would have fared against the 2004 USC Trojans.  Many fans to this day believe that Auburn should have been playing for the national title that year.

Let's take a look at some of the games that Auburn played that make me question whether Auburn would have put a game together had they played USC in 2004.

The first one that jumps out at me is the 10-9 win over LSU in Week Three.  I am not saying by any means that LSU was a bad team that year, but LSU finished the year 16th in the AP final poll. 

LSU needed somewhat of a miraculous finish against Oregon State at home in overtime against the Oregon State Beavers.  USC only won their game against Oregon State 28-20, but the weather was foggy and cold in Corvallis on that night, advantage Beavers.

Another thing that jumped out at me from the 2004 LSU team was that they lost in all of their big games (minus Florida).  They played four ranked opponents all year: Auburn, Florida, Georgia, and Iowa.  Georgia beat the Tigers 45-16.  Iowa beat LSU 30-25 in a Bowl game.  And of course, Auburn beat them 10-9.

Auburn also had impressive wins over Georgia and Tennessee (twice) in 2004.  Tennessee was a strong team all year minus the slip at Neyland Stadium to the Fighting Irish 17-13.  Georgia was also impressive, only losing to Auburn and Tennessee that year.

The thing that makes it hard to think that Auburn would have played USC tough in 2004 was the sheer power of that offense.  The Trojans would just annihilate teams.

Only five teams came within 30 points of winning the game in 2004 (Virginia Tech, Stanford, California, Oregon State, and UCLA).

Auburn beat Virginia Tech 16-13 in their Bowl game while USC beat that same team 24-13 in Week One.  It should be mentioned that Virginia Tech scored 13 points in the fourth quarter however.

I think that Auburn would have put up a game in the first half while USC pulled out a touchdown or two lead in the second half to win the game.

I think if they played each other for the national championship 10 times in 2004, Auburn would have won twice.