By RAY McNULTY, Scripps Howard News Service

The Florida Gators took home the crystal trophy for the second time in three years, but the real winner of Thursday night's BCS National Championship Game might've been the Southern California Trojans.
Or the Utah Utes.
Maybe even the Texas Longhorns.

OK, the guy shouldn't have said it.
Oklahoma's Dominique Franks shouldn't have said earlier this week that Florida's Tim Tebow would be no better than the fourth-best quarterback in the Big 12 Conference this season.
Even if he was joking.
Even if he truly believed what he was saying.
Even if he was right.
And he wasn't.

The end seemed harsh, even cruel, as the most festive football afternoon in South Florida in seven years came to a bone-jarring, dream-crushing conclusion.

There's more than a touch of irony in Baltimore Ravens offensive coordinator Cam Cameron returning to Miami for Sunday's playoff game against the Dolphins -- against a team he coached only a season ago, a team remarkably rebuilt by the man who fired him.

Of all the good fortune to befall the 2008 Miami Dolphins on their way from 1-15 to 11-5, none had a greater impact than this: Brett Favre leaving Green Bay to become a New York Jet.
Because if that doesn't happen, the Jets probably don't cut Chad Pennington.
And if the Jets don't cut Pennington, he never gets to Miami.

Sizing up another just-good-enough performance during what has been a most improbable NFL season in South Florida, even Miami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano had to admit: "This wasn't the blueprint."

Give them credit.
The NFL handed Bill Parcells a welcome-to-Miami gift -- one of the softest schedules in league history -- and his Dolphins have made the most of it.
They've played hard.
They've played smart.

Sometimes in sports, the numbers don't tell the entire story.
This is one of those times.
When it comes to choosing this year's Heisman Trophy winner, the gaudy numbers put up by Oklahoma's Sam Bradford, Texas' Colt McCoy and Texas Tech's Graham Harrell are as deceiving as they as staggering.

Maybe, just maybe, there's some truth to Gary Carter's suspicions that he has been blackballed in baseball.