The BCS is going to need an act of Congress for change

SALT LAKE CITY — I've never been one who gets all tied up in knots over the college football system.

A playoff system would be nice and makes a lot of sense, considering that nearly every other NCAA sport is determined through a tournament or end-of-season competition.

I also see some merit to keeping at least part of the bowl system, which has been around for nearly a century and provides a lot of schools (too many, right now) with the opportunity for late-season glory as well as fun holiday trips for their fans.

One thing I do know is that the current Bowl Championship Series system, which favors six conferences and 65 schools in particular, certainly isn't the answer. The BCS concocted a ponderous scheme that favors schools from elite conferences and allows them to pocket millions of dollars more than schools from other leagues, even if those leagues have better football teams.

The pandering words of Bowl Championship Series executive director Bill Hancock last week in a public letter to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Montana Sen. Max Baucus made me laugh (and made Hatch furious).

The five-page letter with six pages of attachments tries to justify the existence of the BCS and explain why certain conferences are favored over others. The condescending letter basically says the Mountain West Conference and Western Athletic Conference should be happy with all that the BCS is doing for them, even if they aren't treated on the same level as the six BCS conferences.

Hancock and his BCS colleagues seem to think by throwing a few bones to the MWC and WAC that he can make criticism of the BCS's unfair system go away.

I particularly like the line that said without the BCS, Utah would have played in the Las Vegas Bowl in 2008 and earned $900,000 instead of $9 million for playing in the Sugar Bowl. Of course, he failed to mention that if Utah was treated like teams from the Big 12 and Big East, it would have pocketed a lot more money and not had to go through hoops to get in a BCS bowl in the first place.

Hancock and the BCS folks just don't get it. They can't see how blatantly unfair the current system, which favors six conferences over the other five conferences, is.

Hatch responded by calling some of the arguments "absurd" and said the BCS system was "biased, secretive and harmful to schools and competitors" and referred to the letter as "arrogant" and "evasive."