Yet another year with a bogus BCS

So here we are once again with a crowd of teams ready to stake a claim for No. 1 and all of them with a compelling argument.

The debate will reach fever pitch after tomorrow night's "BCS Championship Game" — a name that is fanciful thinking on the part of BCS poohbahs — when either Florida or Oklahoma will join the chorus clamoring for the championship, along with Utah, Texas and USC.

The BCS: You've got to love it.

No, you don't.

Members of the USA Today Coaches Poll have contractually agreed to select the winner of tomorrow night's game as national champion in their final poll of the season. But some coaches — Texas' Mack Brown and Utah's Kyle Whittingham — have already said they will break ranks and vote for their own teams. USC's Pete Carroll says he believes his team is No. 1, but he doesn't have a vote.

"I wasn't sure before, right now, on Friday morning I'm going to vote Texas No. 1 because I think this is the best team in the country," said Brown after Texas' narrow Fiesta Bowl win over Ohio State.

Not that it will matter. It's uncertain how many other coaches would break ranks, and it might not matter if

they did. It is unlikely that USA Today votes will count toward the national champion, since that title is accorded automatically to the winner of the "championship game." In reality, coaches are voting for the rest of the top 25, but not No. 1.

Maybe the coaches should have thought of this before they agreed to play the BCS's game and agreed to cast an automatic vote for No. 1.

Associated Press voters are unfettered by such obligations which, to their credit, is exactly why AP pulled out of the BCS system two years ago and ordered the BCS not to use its poll any more as a way to determine its champion. Then again, it is likely most AP voters will vote for Thursday's winner anyway.

End-of-the-year debates are nothing new to the BCS, and the more the better. If you want the BCS to change, then you don't want this thing to go smoothly, and it rarely has. Five teams finished the season with one loss in 2003 (there were no unbeaten teams). In the end, the BCS didn't invite USC, which was ranked No. 1 in the AP poll, to its national championship game. Result: A split national championship — USC in AP, LSU in the BCS ...

In 2004, five teams finished the regular season unbeaten — USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah and Boise State. USC, Auburn and Utah were still unbeaten after the bowl season and USC was voted national champion. Oddly, only two of those five unbeaten teams were matched in bowl games.

In 2001, Oregon, ranked No. 2 in the AP Poll, was bypassed in favor of Nebraska despite Nebraska's blowout loss in its final regular season game.

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