MIAMI - If nothing else, the most vexing college football season in a while will end in a familiar way: with players and coaches swarming the field, fingers pointed skyward, amid screams of "We're No. 1!"

What will make it different are all the kids and coaches screaming back at the TV set: "Who isn't?"

Southern California, Utah and Texas have all laid claim to the top spot in the last five days, and their arguments are every bit as convincing as the two teams, Oklahoma and Florida, that play Thursday night for the Bowl Championship Series' version of the national title.

Instead of settling the debate, the BCS has just made it more chaotic. The way things are trending, programs already bloated by coaching staffs that rival the president-elect's transition team will soon have to add a lobbyist to the mix.

"I wasn't sure before right now," Mack Brown said after his Longhorns beat Ohio State 24-21 at the Fiesta Bowl, "but Friday morning I'm going to vote Texas No. 1 because I think this is the best team in the country."

Fat lot of good that will do.

Texas' 13-1 record will match the winner of the BCS game, and it includes a win over Oklahoma. But Brown already knows his vote might as well be written with invisible ink. Under an agreement with the BCS, the top two spots in the final coaches' poll go to the participants in its championship game. Only votes ranking Nos. 3 through 25 will count.

In truth, Brown was pleading his case to media members who vote in The Associated Press poll. But there, too, the field is already crowded.

"The bottom line is we're the only team in the country that does not have to explain a loss," Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said, restating what he said last week after his Utes humbled Alabama 31-17 to finish the season at 13-0. "I'm not a guy that's going to go out and campaign ... but if somebody asks me, I'll give them my opinion."

Including his fellow coaches in the BCS poll.

"I'm going to vote how I think I should vote," Whittingham said.

USC's Pete Carroll hasn't cast a vote in the BCS poll for years, even though he's probably had the best team in the country at this time of year for most of the decade. He, too, said the Trojans should be No. 1 - right after they crunched Penn State 38-24 at the Rose Bowl to finish at 13-1 - but wasn't in the mood to lobby again Tuesday.

"Do I think we have a really good football team and we could beat anybody? Yes," Carroll said. "But I've already said all I want to about that."

Yet he was not above tilting at windmills, either.