Miami ? No team ever has won three straight Associated Press national titles.

Few teams ever have been better equipped to do so than Southern California.

USC’s stunningly easy 55-19 victory over Oklahoma on Tuesday night in the Orange Bowl gave the Trojans a second straight national title — and set them up to make a run at history next season.

The Trojans head into the 2005 season with a 22-game winning streak, the longest in the country. If they are No. 1 in the Associated Press preseason poll, they would match Miami’s record streak of 19 straight polls as the top-ranked team.

Things are going so well for the Men of Troy these days, coach Pete Carroll can’t get enough of his job. Turning USC into the nation’s pre-eminent college football program has been just about the coolest thing going for the hyped-up 53-year-old.

“I have people tell me, ‘Just relax.’ Don’t tell me relax. I’m having a … ball,” he said Wednesday morning, still a little groggy after celebrating till dawn with his team.

But get Carroll talking USC football, and even a sleepless night can’t curb his enthusiasm.

“We get to do this for six months, be on top of the college football world. We’ll likely get a chance at being the No. 1 team coming into next year,” he said, picking up steam with every word.

“That’s awesome stuff. I don’t want to do anything different than that. That’s fine, I’ll play some hoops and do a little boogie boarding and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t want to get very far away from it. It’s fun.”

Nine teams have won back-to-back AP titles before, the last being Nebraska in 1994-95.

The Cornhuskers came within a long missed field goal on the final play of the Orange Bowl from beating Florida State for the 1993 national title. They finished third in the final rankings that season before winning two straight, then finished sixth in 1996.

Alabama was No. 2 the season before it won consecutive titles in 1978-79.

Army went back-to-back in 1944-45 and finished No. 2 to Notre Dame in 1946. The Irish went on to win two straight, finished second to Michigan in 1948, then won it again in ’49.

But that was a very different era. Parity has made it tough for even the most prestigious programs — Notre Dame, Nebraska, Penn State — to stay on top.

USC went through it, too. The Trojans spent much of the 1990s trying to recapture lost glory.

When Carroll arrived in 2001 as an NFL castoff, nobody pegged him as the next great college football coach.

Now, he’s just about the only person who has watched USC rip through the last two seasons that isn’t starting to use the ‘D’ word — as in dynasty.

“We’re definitely on our way to qualifying as a dynasty,” said All-American Reggie Bush, part of an offense that saved it’s best performance for the season’s biggest game and will return almost entirely intact next season.

Whether the 2005 Trojans are breaking in a new quarterback is a question that will be answered some time in the next two weeks or so.

Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart tossed an Orange Bowl-record five touchdown passes in what could have been his final college game.

The junior has been hedging lately on his prior pledge to complete his college eligibility. You can’t blame him. The 6-foot-5 left-hander has the look of a top pick in the NFL draft.

But for now Leinart is noncommittal.

“It’s going to take a lot to for me to leave,” he said.

And if he does, USC has former Louisiana prep star John David Booty on deck after two years of seasoning under the masterful tutelage of offensive coordinator Norm Chow. That’s if Booty can beat out Mark Sanchez, the top-rated quarterback prospect in the nation who has committed to USC out of junior college.

“I say this again, and I don’t mean to make any disclaimer or any big statement, but we have structured our program to be able to carry on with losses that occur, whether it was Carson Palmer, Troy Polamalu or the five running backs we lost a couple of years ago or Mike Williams or Keary Colbert or whatever,” Carroll said. “As long as I hang in there I can keep it together.”

Even as the Trojans were basking in the school’s fifth national title, the next line of blue-chippers heading to USC was forming.

Carroll said he had four messages from recruits on his cell phone after the Orange Bowl and USC received two verbal commitments.

“The biggest deal is to continue to bring in talent,” Carroll said.

Right now USC’s talent pool seems bottomless. Their coaching, flawless. As for their potential to keep piling up championships, there is no end in sight.