Everybody knows the BCS is irreparably broken (except maybe the BCS folks themselves.) The core, basic, fundamental problem with the BCS trying to determine an uncontested, absolute, definitive national champion is that because the season is relatively short (12 games), most of the season is tied up with conference play, most teams don't schedule very hard non-conference games and there's no playoff structure, any comparison of teams in different conferences is more a question of speculation than any sort of objective, quantifiable measure.

Let's be fair, though. Traditionally, the college football national champion (and later, the Division I-A national champion) is not a reward given by the NCAA, but rather determined by consensus among several polls (when I was growing up, the two big ones were AP and UPI, then it was AP and Coaches, now it's AP, Coaches, Harris and BCS.) When the polls were not in agreement on who should be #1, the national championship was considered split, much as in heavyweight boxing. And we all lived happily with this arrangement for decades.

There's this perceived idea, however, that there should be a definitive national champion with no ambiguity on the matter. The growing call of college football fans for a playoff system is strong evidence of this. Hogwash, I say! The reason the playoff system is gaining momentum is precisely because the BCS bowls and conference commissioners decided to tamper with a system which, quite frankly, worked fine, under the auspices of having the season culminate in an "epic" 1 vs. 2 matchup. The other BCS bowls would match high-profile teams as well. So, of course, every year a handful of teams complain about getting "snubbed" and a handful of teams which have no business among the college football elite get a free super-money payout.

The core problem the BCS has is that it is trying to reconcile several irreconcilable issues:
-it wants a definitive national championship without any sort of playoff system
-it wants to create compelling bowl games with deserving teams
-it wants to protect long-standing tradition
-it wants to protect the sanctity of the "major" conferences.

Every year, deserving teams are left out of the BCS altogether. This year, the argument could be made for Wisconsin and Auburn. Last year, it was Oregon. The reason for the snubs has everything to do with BCS eligibility rules: a conference can only send two teams, and the "core" BCS conference champions get an automatic berth. Last season, #22 Florida State got a berth while #5 Oregon didn't. The year before, a marginal #21 Pitt team won the free trip, more by default than anything.

Just as bad, tradition takes a back seat to "The Rules." Between 2001 and 2007, the Big Ten champion has played the Pac Ten champion in the Rose Bowl exactly twice. The intention was for traditional bowl tie-ins to have the occasional interruption. The Rose has all but lost its traditional purpose.

Now, let's talk about the BCS rankings for a moment. The use of the Coaches Poll I can see. The Harris Poll has no history, no tradition, no transparency, no accountability and little to no credibility. They're mostly a bunch of voters who have had past ties to major college football programs and who may or may not even follow the sport very closely any more. I would argue that the College Football blogpoll would be a far more effective, honest and balanced poll than the Harris. As for the computer polls, why did they choose the ones they did? And why do they weight the polls the way they do?

If the BCS wants to retain its status as the authoritative bowl system, it needs to do one of two things: either eliminate the national championship game outright and simply do a post-bowl poll to determine the winner (thereby leaving traditional bowl structures intact) or abolish the automatic bowl berths outright and have 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 and 7-8.