I had to split my attention between last night’s BCS championship football game and Sequim-Port Angeles wrestling. I nearly got the best of both worlds.

The first half of the Gator-Sooner contest was fantastic and lived up to the hype for once. Tebow and Bradford each stepped up, and the Gator defense made the difference.

I though the Sooners had two chances late in the first half to get some points on the board and probably should have. Give a guy like Tim Tebow another half and he won’t get picked again and probably find a way to destroy you, as he did. Still, the Gator defense won the game.

The AP poll released this morning has Florida No. 1, Utah No. 2, USC No. 3 and Texas No. 4. Oklahoma dropped to fifth.

All the sports talking heads are saying as much, but here’s my two cents: If there’s no other season like this, it still should be enough to encourage a playoff system. The top four teams have a legitimate beef with being named No. 1. Florida won the championship game. Utah went undefeated. Texas beat Oklahoma and has one loss like Florida. And USC may be the best of them all, a one-loss team that gets knocked down a step because the PAC-10 isn’t the best conference in the land anymore.

Oh well. There’s still football on TV this weekend. Go Chargers.

I missed the second half of the game because I was covering the Sequim-P.A. wrestling match, which, despite all the forfeits, turned out to be spectacular. David Copeland getting a pin in overtime was spectacular, and heavyweight Thomas Gallagher getting No. 1-ranked John Camp to the mat and nearly getting a pin before getting pinned himself was fun to watch.

Perhaps the most interesting match was one between the lightest of lightweights: Sequim’s Zak Huisman and Port Angeles’ Brian Hergert. Hergert is legally blind. I’ve never seen a match involving a wrestler who is blind. Hergert wrestled well and lasted into the third round, where Huisman pinned him. It may be cliché to write that a kid who’s blind is darn courageous for even getting out on the mat, much less competing well, but I don’t care. Kudos to Hergert and his family for participating, and kudos to the Port Angeles wrestlers who supported him well last night.

With the Roughriders forfeiting five weight classes, Sequim easily won the match 48-28, a marked improvement from a 64-9 loss to P.A. in 2008. Sequim last beat the Roughriders in the 2005-2006 season.

Look for the return of Alex O’Donnell this weekend at the Island Invite in Bainbridge. He missed weight at 152 pounds but wound up wrestling an exhibition anyway, scoring a win against P.A.’s Montana Collins.

Nick Grinnell won’t be in action after a concussion and reportedly a broken nose. Teammates say he’ll wear a mask the next time he wrestles.