BCS Title Thriller Is a Playoff Chiller

Grassroots movements bent on fixing the mess college football reportedly is in took a 25-yard sack and a 10-year delay penalty Friday night when the only two unbeaten schools faced off in the Fiesta Bowl for the national title and played a double-overtime thriller.

You might call it the best college game ever contested.

Yet, you can book it, someone soon will send me another doctoral thesis on why there should be a playoff in college football. I’ll get a spread sheet with pie charts complete with brackets, arrows, topographical maps and explanations.

I get a dozen proposals a year from people who, if they applied their brain power to solving real problems, maybe you wouldn’t get stuck in Pomona Freeway traffic at 1 p.m. on any given Tuesday.

Michael Tranghese, Big East Commissioner and sharpest tool in the bowl championship series shed, recently received a playoff proposal that involved 105 schools.

Tranghese doesn’t normally engage in playoff-manifesto e-mail exchanges, but couldn’t help messaging to tell the guy there were more than 105 teams in Division I-A and that 105 is an odd number.

The guy replied that you could toss out a school to make it even.

There, how hard was that?

By midweek, I’ll be able to make a necklace using the string of e-mails received regarding why USC at 11-2 should be national champions instead of 14-0 Ohio State because, allegedly, the Trojans are the hottest team right now.

And, because the schools didn’t meet, I’ll look for common denominators: Ohio State trounced Washington State, 25-7, and USC lost to Washington State, so in other words: Zip your Trojan traps, end of argument, case closed and, for a change, try beating Kansas State.

The BCS has had its share of screw-ups since invading our turf back in 1998, notably sending the wrong teams to the title game in 2000 and 2001, but this isn’t the year to be holding up picket signs because, well, today, BCS officials are floating somewhere in Nirvana.

The BCS didn’t work for USC perhaps, or for the Rose Bowl, or anyone who wants to see a full-blown playoff, but it worked well enough to convince college presidents there is no need for radical change when the current BCS contract expires after the 2005 season.

Ohio State versus Miami on Friday is all the ammo presidents need to silence the playoff drum beat.

“We’re often fond at the Fiesta Bowl of calling college football the greatest game in the world,” Fiesta Bowl Executive Director John Junker said Saturday. “Last night showed why.”

Tranghese, who will serve as BCS coordinator until April 2004, is setting up a presidents’ advisory committee -- two university presidents from each of the six major conferences -- to examine football issues in order to have a plan to present to ABC for the next television contract.

The guess here is college presidents are going to look at what they’ve got and wonder what needs to be changed.

They’ll see a sport that has problems but also one that boasts the most compelling regular season going.

In baseball, you don’t even have to win your division to make the World Series (see Anaheim Angels vs. San Francisco Giants).

In the NFL, 9-7 gets you a crack at the Super Bowl.

The Lakers consider the NBA regular season one long Cactus League warmup before opening day in April.

In college basketball, the regular season is a slow dance until the NCAA tournament.

But in college football, every game counts. A win in September is just as important as one in November -- and so is a defeat. This is where USC people don’t get it. You aren’t allowed to work your way into playoff shape in college football and, sorry, there are no mulligans for Kansas State losses.

That’s the beauty of this sport and what makes it better -- not worse -- than the others.

“There would have been a night and day difference if this would have been a game in a bracket,” Junker said of Friday night’s Ohio State-Miami game. “You would not have had 40,000 Ohio State fans here if there was another game after this.”

In other words, Ohio State-Miami probably killed a full-blown playoff plan.

So what is the future of college football going to look like now?

There had been talk in 2006 of going to a playoff-bowl system compromise, taking the four BCS bowl winners and then playing two more weeks to determine a champion.

You can probably 86 those plans now.

Tranghese said before the game there were four options on the table.

1: Go back to the old bowl system.

2: Keep the present BCS system

3: Tweak the system

4: Go to a playoff.

The answer probably exists somewhere between options No. 3 and No. 4.

“It could be status quo with some tweaking,” Tranghese said.

One way to satisfy the presidents and protect the bowl system is the so-called “BCS-plus” proposal, which would pair the top two teams in the BCS rankings after the four BCS bowl games are played.

But even that plan doesn’t sound so appealing after Friday night’s Fiesta Bowl, because it would mean an additional game for 14-0 Ohio State, likely against one-loss Georgia or two-loss USC.

What else, really, does Ohio State have to prove after upsetting unbeaten Miami?

Still, there are issues that require attention and feelings that need to be soothed.

If you went to BCS-plus, maybe you could solve the Rose Bowl headache.

Maybe you could go retro with the bowl system. Let the Rose Bowl host the Pac-10 and Big Ten champion every year. Put the Big 12 champion in the Orange Bowl, and the SEC winner in the Sugar Bowl.

This year, you could have been looking at Washington State vs. Ohio State in the Rose, Oklahoma and Miami in the Orange, Florida State and Georgia in the Sugar and Iowa against USC in the Fiesta.

Then, after those games were played, you could have taken the top two BCS schools and held a title game, maybe next week on ABC, in the Monday night time slot to avoid knocking heads with the NFL playoffs.

Maybe you add a fifth BCS bowl, the Peach, or the Citrus or the Capital One, and rotate the national title game so each BCS bowl plays its game every year and, every five years, also hosts a title game.

Tranghese is concerned about the health of the Rose Bowl, which drew its lowest crowd since 1944.

But, he asks, was that the fault of the BCS?

“Oklahoma sold 35,000 tickets,” Tranghese said. “Oklahoma was there as a result of the BCS. Obviously, Washington State did not sell as many tickets. But I don’t know how the BCS is responsible for Washington State selling tickets.”

In this brave new BCS world, no one bowl is more important than another.

“We’ve got to address it,” Tranghese said of the Rose Bowl issue. “But we’ve got to address it in a way it doesn’t affect the Fiesta, Orange or Sugar bowls.”

The Rose Bowl may still be the Granddaddy in its mind, but it sold a piece of its soul when it joined the BCS syndicate in 1999. The Rose Bowl lost clout the way big companies do when they get gobbled up in corporate mergers.

Sure it’s a tough pill, because the Rose Bowl doesn’t call its own shots anymore, but you have to take the good with the bad when you become a partner, even in years when it’s mostly bad.

As for you playoff proponents?

Well, put away your charts and pencils for now.

Your day may come, but it’s not today, or tomorrow, and it’s for sure a lot farther away this week than last.

If you don’t think so, pop a tape of the Ohio State-Miami game in the VCR and have a second look.

Then ask yourself, what about this sport needs fixing?

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Final Division I Football Polls

AP Top 25

*--* Rk Team Record Pts Prv 1 Ohio State (71)...14-0 1,775 2 2 Miami...12-1 1,693 1 3 Georgia...13-1 1,598 4 4 USC...11-2 1,590 5 5 Oklahoma...12-2 1,476 8 6 Texas...11-2 1,363 9 7 Kansas State...11-2 1,356 6 8 Iowa...11-2 1,334 3 9 Michigan...10-3 1,182 12 10 Washington State...10-3 1,085 7 11 Alabama...10-3 988 13 12 North Carolina State...11-3 943 17 13 Maryland...11-3 844 20 14 Auburn...9-4 821 19 15 Boise State...12-1 692 18 16 Penn State...9-4 675 10 17 Notre Dame...10-3 657 11 18 Virginia Tech...10-4 544 21 19 Pittsburgh...9-4 520 24 20 Colorado...9-5 307 14 21 Florida State...9-5 291 16 22 Virginia...9-5 250 _ 23 TCU...10-2 231 _ 24 Marshall...11-2 201 _ 25 West Virginia...9-4 195 15

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Others receiving votes: Florida 120, Texas Tech 80, Oklahoma State 73, Boston College 52, Colorado State 44, LSU 38, South Florida 27, Wisconsin 15, Minnesota 4, Arkansas 3, Air Force 2, Hawaii 2, Purdue 2, Fresno State 1, North Texas 1.

ESPN/USA Today Top 25

*--* Rk Team Record Pts Prv 1 Ohio State (61)...14-0 1,525 2 2 Miami...12-1 1,451 1 3 Georgia...13-1 1,378 4 4 USC...11-2 1,362 5 5 Oklahoma...12-2 1,244 8 6 Kansas State...11-2 1,230 6 7 Texas...11-2 1,140 9 8 Iowa...11-2 1,105 3 9 Michigan...10-3 1,011 11 10 Washington State...10-3 932 7 11 North Carolina State...11-3 876 17 12 Boise State...12-1 808 15 13 Maryland...11-3 803 18 14 Virginia Tech...10-4 644 19 15 Penn State...9-4 619 10 16 Auburn...9-4 579 22 17 Notre Dame...10-3 525 12 18 Pittsburgh...9-4 486 23 19 Marshall...11-2 333 24 20 West Virginia...9-4 297 13 21 Colorado...9-5 291 14 22 TCU...10-2 274 _ 23 Florida State...9-5 219 16 24 Florida...8-5 145 20 25 Virginia...9-5 141 _

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Others receiving votes: Boston College 129; Colorado State 100; Texas Tech 60; South Florida 28; LSU 25; Fresno State 19; Oklahoma State 17; Hawaii 8; Minnesota 6; Air Force 4; Wisconsin 4; Bowling Green 2; North Texas 2; Tennessee 2; UCLA 1.