The 2005 Orange Bowl was the BCS National Championship Game of the 2004 NCAA Division I-A football season and was played on January 4, 2005, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

It was the first college game to have two Heisman winners on the same field (and on opposite teams): Leinart won the 2004 Heisman Trophy, which was awarded in the month prior to the Orange Bowl, and Oklahoma quarterback Jason White had won the award the previous season.

On June 10, 2010, USC was forced to vacate all games from December 2004 to the end of the 2005 season among other sanctions as the result of an NCAA investigation into the school's football and men's basketball programs.

NCAA investigators released a report stating that a USC player, Reggie Bush, was ineligible beginning in December 2004.

ESPN writer D'Arcy Maine described Simpson as having "[tortured] those in the crowd with each attempt at a note, sounding more and more like a shrieking hyena as she went on", and considered it justification for "why she preferred to lip-sync".