BCS unfairness continues with this week's championship game

A vice president once said what this country needs is a good 5-cent cigar. What it actually needs is a good system to choose an annual college football king that would rescue us from the horrid current one.

The postseason, which finally will end with the national title game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday night, has become not only a huge bore but also a metaphor for the greed, venality and unfairness that has marked our culture in the first decade of the 21st century.

The "championship" game is merely an endorsement of the "them that has, gets" philosophy that has permeated American society and driven it to the edge of bankruptcy. Both Alabama and Texas, with their multimillion-dollar coaches, are among a group of elite programs that get to share millions of dollars in an era of acute economic distress. They can be aptly compared to the nation's biggest financial institutions where high salaries and enormous bonuses continue, despite the economic turmoil they caused.

As the regular season ended, there came the amazing news that the University of Notre Dame — once a small parochial institution until football pulled it from obscurity and is now too big to fail — was willing to rid itself of a losing coach, to the tune of as much as $18 million in contractual obligation. After all, the Fighting Irish niche in Valhalla has been threatened by several seasons of mediocrity.

What can turning that around be worth to the legacy of Knute Rockne? The answer came back quickly — almost anything. Never mind that American colleges and universities are strapped for cash, and more importantly, so are their students. Important things must come first.

So the Colossus flexed its reputation and hired a big-time winner, who quickly abandoned his young gladiators at another school only a few weeks before they were to enter the Sugar Bowl arena on New Year's Day to preserve an unbeaten record. Who could argue? It was Notre Dame calling, and this guy's name was Brian Kelly.

The result was predictable. Kelly's former team, the clearly demoralized University of Cincinnati Bearcats, had their heads chomped off by the ferocious Florida Gators.

The Sugar Bowl debacle was sweetened for Florida by the presence on the sidelines of coach Urban Meyer, who had announced he was quitting the game for health reasons, then changed his mind to take only a leave of absence once he clobbered his alma mater. Jeff Quinn, the stand-in assistant coach for Cincinnati, also had accepted a head coaching job elsewhere — at the University of Buffalo — but, unlike Kelly, felt responsibility compelled him to remain loyal one more time to the boys who helped him win his new post.