NEW ORLEANS – We waited three days for this?

Whoever suggested renaming Sunday night’s LSU-Oklahoma matchup the Sweet ‘N Low Bowl was onto something. When the mistake-filled, penalty-prone, almost four-hour tractor pull of a game came to a merciful finish, the LSU Tigers beat the Paper Tigers, 21-14, confirming what most of the nation suspected after Thursday’s Rose Bowl.

Southern Cal could beat these teams – back-to-back – and still make it to the beach in time to catch the sunset.

The best thing that can be said for the Sugar Bowl is that the suits and computer programmers who run the Bowl Championship Series got it half-right. LSU, with a defense as fast and fierce as any in the country, at least proved itself deserving of a shot at the national championship. So half of one certainly seems to be a fair trade-off.

The same can hardly be said about the stumbling, bumbling, grumbling Sooners. They came in averaging 45 points a game as the nation’s top scoring offense, but ran up nearly half as many penalty yards (70) as total yards (154) and threatened to make a game of it only briefly at the end.

That’s when their Heisman Trophy quarterback, Jason White, who completed just 13 of 37 passes on the night, misfired on his final eight throws. He was spared a ninth straight only because Tigers linebacker Lionel Turner planted him in the Superdome turf with LSU’s fifth sack of the night.

Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops conceded that the Sooners might have abandoned the run too quickly, but added afterward, “I’m not going to sit here and second-guess my coaches who are making the play calls. … We probably should have made some better decisions as coaches, too.”

Of course, that didn’t stop Stoops from second-guessing the officials throughout the first half, spending almost as much time on the field as his offense did. Not that it would have made much of a difference. LSU’s defense held the Sooners to a third of their normal production in yards and points, and the two touchdowns they did manage were set up by a blocked punt and an interception.

Asked whether that was the best defense he’s faced in his four years at Oklahoma, Stoops mentioned the Kansas State unit that pounded the Sooners in the Big 12 conference game, then came to his senses.

“Yes,” he said, “overall, I would probably say that.”

Probably?

LSU’s defense was so good it made people forget how average the Tigers are on the other side of the ball. It was so good, in fact, LSU’s claim to even half a national championship looked legit.

In the buildup to this game, those same Tigers became the fall guys for Southern California being left out of the BCS championship. Despite finishing No. 1 in both human polls, USC was edged out of the No. 2 spot in the final BCS rankings by LSU because the computers awarded the Tigers a decisive edge in the strength-of-schedule component (29th-toughest versus 37th).

But it turns out that Oklahoma was the pretender.

Not only did the Sooners fail to win their own conference, getting pounded 35-7 in the Big 12 title game by Kansas State, their computer ranking as the 11th-strongest schedule looked more suspect by the day as the various bowls played out.

Their opponents managed only a 2-6 mark in the postseason. Their Big 12 conference mates went 2-5 and failed to beat any ranked teams. All those gaudy totals Oklahoma rang up on both sides of the ball, all those individual awards and comparisons to the best college teams through the first 12 games of the regular season ring hollow when measured against the last two.

Maybe Kansas State was just good, and LSU was great.

Oklahoma linebacker Vince Carter wasn’t sure about the second part, but that might just be sour grapes.

“We stopped ourselves more than they stopped us,” he said.

Then again, the trash-talking was going both ways.

Tigers defensive end Marquise Hill sacked White and recalled telling him, “‘Excuse me, Mr. Heisman. I’m going to be coming at you all night.’ He just nodded his head at me. I think our conference is the hardest and Jason White wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before.”

He might be right, since like Southern Cal, the teams on LSU’s schedule went through the bowl season compiling a very respectable 5-1 mark. Then again, he hasn’t seen a quarterback as good as USC’s Matt Leinart, a sophomore who carved up a good Michigan defense in a way that seems beyond his LSU counterpart Matt Mauck, a 24-year-old former minor league farmhand with a limited upside.

LSU might have the better defense, but USC is definitely the better team. Argue the point all you want, but know this: After the Sugar Bowl ended, the Tigers’ All-American defensive tackle, Chad Lavalais, who’s as tough as they come, was in a gracious mood.

“It’s like winning the lottery, but you have to share the Powerball with another person,” he said. “It’s still a good deal.”

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org

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