Cowboyinexile
I have spoken
best two teams played AND Oklahoma State had the best resume.
This is probably most correct. I wasn't here then and I know with @4down20 part of Bama's claim was our margin of victory in key games. But it was conference champ vs someone who didn't win their division, home loss in primetime vs road loss on a Friday (never bet a road favorite in that scenario), and it was a loss with an asterisk. Our players had to deal with the loss of people they knew that day, and we missed a chip shot field goal (that looked good to me) that would have kept the game from going to overtime. That being said, we had a 17 point lead in the 3rd quarter so it shouldn't have came down to that.
One crap thing about it, on their school calendar the next year they had a big picture of their fans storming the field after the game. My office is next to the intern room and 90% of our interns come from Iowa State. I had to walk past that son of a bitch for a year straight.