BCS Should Be Sent Out to a Football Junkyard

The bowl championship series reminds us that it is not unlike a used car held together with parts collected at a salvage yard.

Sunday?

Well, you could say old BCS Besty blew another gasket.

The BCS was a clunker when it was created in 1998 and has leaked oil every year since.

This year’s outrage is an outrage but it’s only the latest.

In 2000, Miami was outraged when it beat Florida State but lost the No. 2 BCS spot to Florida State by .34.

In 2001, Colorado and Oregon were outraged when Nebraska slipped into the title game by the margin of .05.

This year’s miscarriage of justice is the worst, by far, in the six-year history of the BCS.

It’s also true all BCS politics are local.

In case you were on a space mission and missed it, USC finished No. 1 in both polls Sunday but finished third in the BCS standings by the margin of .16.

So the BCS messed up again, so what’s new?

For the third time in six years, it messed up a perfectly good No. 1 vs. No. 2 match-up and a lot of travel plans.

BCS Coordinator Michael Tranghese said Sunday this system is still better than the system before, which is sort of like comparing diseases.

You do have to say that every time the BCS breaks down, someone with a wrench is willing to fix it.

First, the BCS started with three computers in the formula, said, “nah, that’s no good,” and expanded to seven.

When Miami felt it got robbed in 2000, the BCS added a “quality win” component to the formula.

In 2001, after No. 2 Oregon finished No. 4 in the BCS, the commissioners demanded the “margin of victory” component be removed from the formula.

The BCS has been tweaked more than Michael Jackson’s nose.

The bottom line here is that as long as there is no playoff in college football, the BCS remains college football’s best-worst answer.

This is not comforting, I know, but college presidents are not about to approve of a full-blown NFL playoff, so why not try to fix the wretched thing the best we can?

Sunday’s USC disaster will, in the very least, hasten change after the current contract ends following the 2005 season.

Sunday’s disaster will put the most logical next BCS-plan on a fast track. And that plan is simply to go back to the old bowl system and then have a one-game playoff after those games. This is known in BCS circles as “BCS-plus” and it never sounded so good.

In BCS-plus, you could use the dreaded BCS standings only as a way to pit No. 1 vs. No. 2 after the major bowl games are played.

Naturally, the futuristic ideas of 2006 will not satisfy today’s bloodlust, so we need a few immediate solutions:

* No team should qualify for the national title game unless it wins at least a share of its conference title. It’s simple, it’s fair, and it’s one line in the BCS contract.

The BCS made a horrible decision two years ago when it did not add this provision after Nebraska advanced to the BCS title-game without winning its own division of the Big 12.

The major conference commissioners hemmed and hawed but ultimately failed to act, and now it’s come back to haunt them.

“We probably thought we would never get bitten again, but here we are,” Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said Sunday.

Had the clause been in place, Oklahoma would have been out this year and the Sugar Bowl would have pitted USC vs. LSU for the undisputed national title.

Would anyone have had a problem with that?

* If there is no dispute over No. 1 and No. 2 in the polls, chuck the BCS standings off the highest overpass. Only use the BCS standings if there is conflict in the human polls.

* Get rid of the BCS computers unless operators make their systems open for inspection. How can anyone trust a system in which the winner is decided by a .16 computer burp and no one has to explain the how or the why?

Hansen just about hit the roof when LSU passed USC in six of the seven BCS computers. Hansen noted that one computer guy had Miami of Ohio rated ahead of USC.

“That’s so absurd,” Hansen said. “I don’t see how we can live with these rankings.”

* Demand that the USA Today/ESPN coaches reveal their votes. This isn’t North Korea, after all, we’re an open society.

We’re not accusing any of the 63 voting coaches of cooking the books, but consider that Oklahoma, after a 35-7 loss to Kansas State, received eight first-place votes. It’s interesting to note that had Oklahoma fell to No. 2 in the coaches’ poll instead of No. 3, USC would have finished ahead of LSU in the BCS and played Oklahoma for the national title.

This outcome would have saved the coaches the embarrassment of having USC at No. 1 but not playing in the national-title game. Wouldn’t you like to know who those eight coaches are?

In the end, obviously, a college football playoff is the only true way to settle this mess

“I don’t know how to fix the system other than to play it off,” USC Coach Pete Carroll said.

Nice thought, except it just is not going to happen. If you want to pen a letter, address it to the major college presidents who will not allow a playoff to happen.

The BCS has failed, yes, but it has tried.

The BCS standings were only concocted because, after the Rose Bowl joined the BCS, several AP voters told conference commissioners they did not want to have a direct impact in making the No. 1 vs. No. 2 game.

So, the BCS standings were born.

Also, as bad as this year’s mess is, consider this: There are three one-loss teams in the top five and, because of this colossal BCS hemorrhage, all three get a chance to play for at least a share of the national title.

For all the wrong reasons, and in a weird, twisted and illogical way, this year’s upheaval may not be the worst thing that ever happened.

The Rose Bowl is, for the first time since 2001, um, happy.

The granddaddy of all bowls has a traditional Pac-10-Big Ten match-up and quite frankly, a dynamite game with a half-share of the national title at stake.

“I’ve always looked at it as the single greatest tradition in college football,” Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr said of the Rose Bowl.

Gee, it’s been a long time since someone’s said that.

After all the screaming is done, I truly believe we’ll recover from this.