Every big-time college football program wants to play for a national championship, or what the BCS calls the national championship.  True sports fans all know there really won't be a national championship in Division I football until it's decided on the field, as it is in college basketball, hockey, baseball, lacrosse, and even the smaller football programs that compete in Division III.

 
The BCS is all about the politics of the big conferences, and the cash cows that the major bowl games have become.  So the spoils are rotated around the circuit and each year one of the major bowls gets to host the national championship game, while the others feature attractive matchups of the other top teams in the BCS rankings.

Sometimes things work out just fine, as it did last year when USC and Texas, who were Numbers one and two in the polls all season long, played for the title.  Other seasons the BCS hasn't been so lucky.  When three or more teams are fortunate and skillful enough to go undefeated, one team, despite accumulating an unblemished record against good opposition in a tough conference, gets left out in the cold.

And when that happens the sound and fury lasts a lot longer than the conclusion of the college football season.  Once the championship game is played to its conclusion, the school that was left out in the cold invariably clamors for a change in rules and screams out that they’d like to play one last game against the BCS winner.  It never happens.

But the desire and the dance is still the same.  Every team wants to be ranked Number One and Number Two in the BCS rankings, and it usually doesn’t much matter which school is first or second, because they'll play it off on the field with the winner ascending to the mythical national championship by virtue of beating number two.  At least that's what the BCS hopes for.  It doesn't always work out that way.

This year it looks like Number Three has an edge.  While Ohio State and Michigan have been ranked first and second all year, they are set to play each other on November 18.  The winner will be propelled into the BCS title game unless the unthinkable happens and that team is upset on the way to the big dance.

But if form holds, the loser of Michigan-Ohio State will scoot down the BCS ladder a few rungs, leaving Louisville to finish the season ranked second, presuming, of course, they are able to beat Rutgers on Thursday, November 9.

If Louisville loses to unbeaten Rutgers, and Rutgers is able to knock off West Virginia in their last game of the season on December 2, then the BCS will really be in a quandary.  Even if Rutgers were to run the table, it's unlikely they will be able to climb from their current ranking at Number 15 all the way up to second in the polls, which is where they’d have to finish to have a shot at the national championship.

If Rutgers is to win out, and I think that’s a real long shot, it would leave either Ohio State or Michigan undefeated while forcing the BCS to choose a one-loss team to face an undefeated opponent for the championship.

That scenario might even result in a rematch between Michigan and Ohio State.  But most football fans don't like second acts.  Football is not boxing.  While a rematch in boxing is always appealing if the first fight was a good one, the public generally doesn'’t want to see the same two teams duke it out again.

While it looks to me like Louisville will wind up playing the survivor of Michigan-Ohio State, all of the other possible scenarios are fraught with problems.  Which one-loss team has the right stuff to make it to the championship game?

 
Right now Florida, Texas, Auburn, USC, California, Notre Dame, West Virginia, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Wake Forest all have one loss, even though that will change because a number of these teams play each other before the regular season ends.  While you could mount an argument for any of these teams if they finish the season with just one loss, you won't be able to convince everyone that your one-loss team is better than all the others with only one blemish on their record.  Not only that, Boise State is undefeated at 9-0, and ranked immediately behind Rutgers in the polls.  From the looks of things, they won't have much trouble knocking off their last three opponents to finish a perfect 12-0.

 
While Boise State suffers from playing in the relatively weak Western Athletic Conference, they crushed high-scoring Hawaii and Oregon State (the same OSU Beavers that managed to beat then second-ranked USC).  Boise State has scored 40 points or more in seven of its nine victories, clear evidence to me that they would not be overmatched against any team in the country.  But they won't make it to the title game regardless of what they do.  Like Rutgers, they’ve got too far to go and not enough time to get there.

While a Louisville vs. the winner of Michigan-Ohio State will get the Bowl Championship Series off the stupidity hook for another year, their credibility seems to be living on borrowed time.  Any other scenario results in resolution that is less than clear.

The easiest way to solve all of this is to have a title game, like they do in almost every other sport.  The BCS adherents argue that it would keep student athletes out of school for too long.  That’s a specious argument because you're not talking about more than an eight-team playoff, and only two of those eight schools would progress to the final week.

Division III already has a playoff system and their student athletes seem to be surviving just fine, thank you.  Their championship is decided where it should be, on the football field.

Every other sport crowns their champion the same way.  No one would ever suggest voting for the NCAA basketball champ, or using computer-generated rankings to select the college World Series baseball winner, or the best swimming team, or the top lacrosse program, or any other sport except football.

There’s just too much money tied up in the bowl games that drive the BCS, and the big conferences love the somewhat loaded system that gives their top teams a bit more than an equal chance to play for all the marbles.

The system stinks and I have one word for it, “Phooey!”  Decide the nation championship on the football field.  Anything else is suspect, subject to conjecture, and fails to deliver the goods more years than it does.

 
I’m not telling the NCAA anything they don't already know.  And I'm probably howling at the moon, but I wish they'd get real and do the right thing, but I think that might just be a bit too much to ask or hope for.