The B in BCS stands for Boring

NEW ORLEANS -- Georgia’s double overtime win over USC in the Rose Bowl on Tuesday had to be, without a doubt, the finest game of the holiday season.

The Bulldogs and Trojans were arguably the two hottest teams in college football and it was good to see them settle things on the field.

Oh, wait, that game never happened.

Instead we got two Bowl Championship Series duds that proved nothing.

The only question about USC versus Illinois was going to be the final score, which turned out to be 49-17.

Georgia versus Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl looked interesting as a “History of Cultures” mid-term paper but turned out to be four hours and five minutes of Colt Brennan carnage.

“It seemed like forever to play this game,” Georgia Coach Mark Richt said after his team’s 41-10 victory in the Superdome. “Probably the longest game in the history of college football.”

A lot of it was Richt’s fault for challenging a referee’s call that caused nothing but an unnecessary delay. Richt also allowed his backup quarterback to commit the unpardonable sins of a runaway victory: incomplete passes.

Had the Sugar Bowl been a PGA Tour event, Richt could have been penalized strokes for slow play.

Other than a combined-score slaughter of 90-27, though, weren’t those two BCS games spell-binding?

The BCS got exactly what it deserved -- and seems to in a lot of years.

Why did this have to happen?

If there isn’t going to be playoff in college football, or even a Plus One, the least the BCS could do is give us the best bowl games that can be legally arranged.

We know all about the hang-ups that derailed USC and Georgia playing each other in the Rose Bowl.

When Louisiana State stunningly jumped from No. 7 to No. 2 in the final BCS standings and made the title game, the Rose Bowl could not simply select Georgia to replace Ohio State, which was also lost to the championship game.

The Rose needed to ask the Sugar Bowl’s permission to take Georgia because the Sugar had lost its anchor champion, LSU.

The Rose Bowl, ironically, had lobbied for such a rule after the Orange Bowl, um, borrowed Iowa to pair against USC after the 2002 season.

No more of that!

Interesting also that, according to Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive, the Rose Bowl didn’t ask the SEC if it could take Georgia this year.

The guess here is the SEC would have said no but, as mom always said, does it hurt to ask?

The Rose, in the end, stuck with what it knew, even if it meant taking a three-loss Illinois team that finished tied for second in the Big Ten with Michigan, which beat Illinois during the season.

And the losers were . . . all of us.

There is another clause in the BCS rule book that states that the conferences may, although they are not required to, adjust the pairings taking into consideration “whether alternative pairings may have greater or lesser appeal to college football fans as measured by expected ticket sales for the bowls and by expected television interest . . .”

Would Georgia versus USC not have had greater appeal to college fans?

Curiously, the commissioners’ clause has never been invoked.

Last month, Stewart Mandel of SI.com reported that the Big 12 requested a pairings adjustment that would have permitted Oklahoma to go to the Orange Bowl this year in exchange for Kansas. That would have allowed BCS No. 3 Virginia Tech to play No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl with Kansas playing West Virginia in the Fiesta.

The commissioners rejected the idea.

Imagine a bowl lineup this year in which No. 1 Ohio State played No. 2 LSU in the BCS title game, No. 3 Virginia Tech played No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange and No. 5 Georgia played No. 7 USC in the Rose.

The Sugar Bowl could have been Arizona State versus Hawaii, which probably would have been more enthralling than the Sugar Bowl we got.

Of course, reconfiguring the bowls to the public’s liking would have probably caused more controversy in a year when there is no clear-cut No. 1.

The commissioners have always maintained the BCS was created only to match No. 1 versus No. 2. They wanted to leave wiggle room just in case some year the Rose Bowl wanted to take the third-place Big Ten team.

And the BCS wonders why, in popularity polls, it ranks lower than scurvy?

USC vs. Georgia, well, it could have been a contender.

June Jones’ Hawaii teams played Pete Carroll’s Trojans in 2003 and 2005.

So how does Georgia, as a franchise, compare?

“I mean USC had a lot of talent,” Jones said. “I don’t know that they had as much team speed on defense as this [Georgia] team has.”

Too bad we couldn’t find out.

Too bad Illinois and Hawaii got worked on because USC-Georgia could not be worked out.

It might have been, unlike what we saw Tuesday, interesting.

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com