First the University of Utah did it, and now we have Boise State. While football fans nationwide try to catch their breath after watching the thrilling ending to Monday's Fiesta Bowl in Arizona, the folks who control college football would have to be either blind or wilfully ignorant to avoid the question hanging in the air.

Why not institute a playoff system in Division 1-A football?

The Bowl Championship Series is a ruse. It has been from the start. It exists to ensure that the largest and wealthiest football conferences dominate the sport with little threat from any upstarts. It crowns as champions each year players who got to the game because a handful of people and a computer put them there.

Two years ago, after an undefeated U. team was given a special dispensation to play in the Fiesta Bowl (with the understanding, of course, that it could not be the national champion), the BCS coordinator said, "I don't think there's a groundswell for a playoff, a multiteam playoff."

It would be interesting today to get a show of hands among those who watched Boise State use both the hook-and-ladder and statue-of-liberty plays to pull out a win against Oklahoma. How many of them would like to see Boise State play again this season, fighting its way up a playoff ladder for a chance at the title?

How many folks, other than those who run the BCS, think the possibility of a Cinderella upsetting a major football school would be bad for ratings or profits? How many think it would be bad for football in general?

How many fans in places like Boise, Salt Lake City or Provo would cheer even harder if their team had even an outside chance at a national title?

Division 1-A football is the only NCAA sport in which many participants enter the season with absolutely no chance of such a thing. Other levels of college football operate with their own playoff systems, which counters the well-worn argument that a playoff would be too time-consuming for student athletes.

You hear other arguments, as well. One is that a playoff system would have to be limited to eight teams, which means an undefeated midmajor team such as Boise State or Utah still might not get in.

You hear a lot of reasons, in fact, as to why the thing can't work.

Enough. The only things missing are will and imagination. Utah and Boise State have proven that so-called midmajor teams can play with the big boys. The BCS can't go on pretending it's deaf to the world.