Pick your poison, Pete.

Southern Cal head coach Pete Carroll will face tonight the same skull-and-crossbones dilemma Big 12 Conference coaches faced all autumn.

Whom do you want to stop … tailback Adrian Peterson or quarterback Jason White?

Then again, perhaps Carroll, who also serves as USC’s defensive coordinator, thinks he has enough talent to neutralize Oklahoma’s vaunted 1-2 punch in the national football championship game.

Kansas University had plenty of defensive talent when the Jayhawks met the Sooners on Oct. 23 in Norman, Okla., but KU coach Mark Mangino didn’t have quite enough.

KU’s game plan was to load up against the run, shut Peterson down and let a rejuvenated secondary go one-on-one against OU’s less ballyhooed receivers. As it turned out, OU’s receivers were just as good as Peterson and White. They just didn’t have the pub because, well, there’s only so much ink to go around.

Peterson did nothing early against the Jayhawks. In his first five carries, the touted freshman gained a grand total of five yards. In his next five carries, Peterson gained 16 yards.

Meanwhile, White was shredding the KU secondary. In the first half, White completed 21 of 32 passes for 265 yards and two touchdowns. Still, OU hadn’t made a statement. The Sooners’ lead at the break was a tenuous 14-10.

As you may recall, however, Oklahoma iced it in the third quarter when White threw a 69-yard TD bomb to Brandon Jones and linebacker Lance Mitchell returned a Jason Swanson fumble 28 yards for a score that boosted OU’s lead to 28-10.

The fourth quarter should have been moot. Coach Bob Stoops could have rested White and Peterson, but he didn’t. Stoops had to dance the BCS polka. Stoops had to win impressively over an unranked team or the Sooners might slide in the complicated BCS ratings system.

So in the last 15 minutes Peterson carried the ball 11 times — as many in the first three quarters combined — for 99 yards and one touchdown. And White threw his fourth TD pass, an eight-yard strike to Mark Bradley with just 35 seconds remaining.

Final score: Oklahoma 41, Kansas 10. It was by far the Jayhawks’ most lopsided defeat of the season. KU’s second-worst loss was 30-21 to Colorado.

Oklahoma had run up the score — normally a cardinal sin in the coaching profession — but Mangino vowed he didn’t care, and it wasn’t because he once worked for Stoops.

“I’d do the same thing,” Mangino said in his post-game media session. “In the quest to have one national champion, there’s going to be some casualties along the way. We’re not complaining. We’ve got to keep them out of the end zone. That’s our job.”

White wound up with 27 completions in 44 attempts for 389 yards and four TDs. Oh, and he didn’t throw an interception against the team that would wind up as the Big 12 leader in that category with 19. Overall, it was the 2003 Heisman Trophy winner’s best passing performance of the season.

Later, the sixth-year senior threw for 383 yards and three TDs against Nebraska, another Big 12 north team with a strong defense and a turgid offense, but KU and NU were his only 300-yards plus outings.

Peterson, by the way, finished that sunny late October afternoon with 22 carries for 122 yards. A final accounting showed he and White were involved in 66 plays that accounted for 511 yards and five TDs. The only other OU backfield performer who touched the ball was back-up tailback Kejuan Jones who carried seven times for 20 yards.

On paper, it was a day that did not produce many gold stars for KU’s defenders. Still, future first-team All-Big 12 picks Nick Reid and Charles Gordon led the Jayhawks with 11 and 9 tackles, respectively. And end David McMillan, a first-team all-league pick of the coaches, was credited with two sacks — a notable achievement considering OU’s gargantuan offensive line surrendered a mere seven sacks in the Sooners’ dozen games.

On offense, Kansas couldn’t come close to matching Peterson and White, although that might not have been a factor. The most prolific 1-2 punch the Sooners faced all season was Texas’ Vince Young and Cedric Benson, and OU blanked the Longhorns, 12-0.

Then again, USC boasts an even better two-man package in quarterback Matt Leinart and tailback Reggie Bush, so Stoops will face a pick-your-poison problem, too.

When push comes to shove, though, the winner will be the team that does the best job of shaking off the long layoff of the Orange Bowl’s interminable halftime show.