The BCS is totally screwed up. But we already knew that, didn't we?

I don't know how anyone, even a computer, can think that a team should be playing for the national championship after being clobbered in its last game of the season and losing its conference championship. It should be like that high-school kid who's suing the university that accepted him, but then rejected him after he blew off his last semester.

Removing disparity of scores from the calculation was a good notion, in that it discouraged coaches from running it up for BCS points, but it went too far. They should have retained it, but capped it (perhaps at thirty points or so). Had they done so, I suspect that yesterday's trouncing of Oklahoma by Kansas State would have (justly) knocked them out of a trip to New Orleans in January. And as for LSU, seriously, considering how weak the SEC is this year, how hard is it to survive that conference with only one loss?

Anyway, as many people are saying, it looks like there will be two national championship games this year--one in the Big Easy, and one in Pasadena. There's no question that USC got screwed by the system (particularly because they had a weak strength-of-schedule ranking due to playing in the Pac 10). And as for their opponent, consider the situation had scores been a factor in the BCS calculation. Michigan was only two scores from being undefeated at Oregon and Iowa--they were blown out by no one. It could be just a couple of my degrees talking, but if the number-four team beats the number-one team on New Year's Day, why shouldn't they be considered the national champions?

Anyway, even if not, a Michigan-USC Rose Bowl will seem like old times, and good ones. Let's just hope that it's officiated by NCAA rules, instead of west-coast rules (in which apparently it's not necessary--scroll down the page to number ten of the worst calls in officiating history--to have possession of the ball when one breaks the plane of the goal line).

So why can't they simply set up a knockout competition in December to settle the issue? I recall THE WEEKLY STANDARD advocated this one year ago. IIRC, there are about a dozen major conferences (when you include the geographical divisions of the biggest ones). That makes three or four games at most, which is the number of bowl games played by the major schools. Meanwhile, the losers (e.g. Army vs. Navy, most probably) play 1-2 bowl games with no impact on the national championship.

Heck -- if the bowl games are supposed to embrace traditional rivalries, maybe the playoffs could be set up in such a way that certain conference champions always meet in the first round.

MARCU$

Dump the BCS, dump the idiotic polls, they're just jobs programs for pundits. Have the conference champions, or better, the team in each conference with the best record, figure it out on the field. The other divisions manage to get it done on the field.

re "West-Coast Rules": This might have just been long-delayed payback for the 1949 Rose Bowl in which Northwestern scored a similar phantom touchdown without the ball to defeat California by 6 points.

I think all the comments about the problems with the BCS are wholly premature until after USC plays Michigan in the Rose Bowl. As the BCS accurately factored in, USC has played only 2 good teams this year and lost to one of them (California). Michigan has played a much tougher schedule and an upset is likely. Stand by for massive backpedaling by the sports pundits on Jan 3rd.