Uh, Tennessee won the championship in 1998, and Peyton Manning never won a national championship, so fairly sure he wasn't on that team.
I'm also fairly certain that Ohio State would have curb stomped either Tennessee or Florida State that year, and I'm fairly certain that USC would have beaten the eventual champ in 2008. Just because Ohio State and USC lost to some pedestrian teams doesn't mean they weren't the best teams that year, it just means they didn't have the best record.
So, no, it didn't work out.