By Bob Markus

As any college football fan could tell you, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has one too many letters in its acronym. It should drop the middle letter and what's left (BS for those of you who are acronymically challenged) would just about describe it. The presumed purpose of the BCS is to ensure that the best two college football teams in the land meet at the close of the bowl season to determine which is truly the No. 1 team in the country. Trouble is, they haven't yet figured out a sure fired way of determining who the top two are. Every year, it seems, somebody is flashing Winston Churchill's famous V sign and insisting: We're No. 2. There are certain instances, you see, when it's good to be Avis. Last year it was Texas, which was left out of the national championship game in favor of Oklahoma, which it had beaten. Another year it was Southern Cal, which had been named No.1 in both wire service polls, but deemed no better than No. 3 by the complex melange of computers and human pollsters the BCS entrusted with the task.



This year there seems to be little doubt about who will play in the national championship game. It will be Texas, the undefeated Big 12 champion which already has defeated its most significant adversaries, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, and the winner of the SEC championship game--either Florida or Alabama. The only other team with even a whisper of a chance is Louisiana State, which, if it can upset Alabama this week-end and win the rest of its games would win the SEC West and play the Gators, to whom they have already lost once. There is a chance that the BCS will actually get it right with this pairing, but there is also a chance you'll run into a flying pig some day. These same three teams have been at the top of the leaderboard since even before the season opened and that is one of the problems.



For a number of years in the mid-1980s I was a voter in the Associated Press poll. While not a total maverick, I did tend to have some ideas that were thought to be, well, a little odd. For instance, I thought a team's performance on the field should outweigh my preconceived notion of who's No. 1. That's why I thought they should do away with preseason polls and wait until the games are played before trying to sort it out. Under the system that prevailed then--and the one that prevails now--many of the voters seemed to think their ballots were cast in stone and could not be dislodged without, as the sportscasters of today love to say, "indisputable evidence." That evidence would not include, say, a team like Alabama beating unranked Arkansas 12-10 by blocking a potential season-destroying field goal. Nor would it include a team like Florida losing at home to Mississippi, which hasn't been a national powerhouse since Peyton and Eli Manning's father was playing there, as happened last year. These voters, and I believe they are in the majority, decide who is No. 1 in August and will not change their minds until that team is beaten and sometimes not even then. I always voted by the theory that my preseason vote was merely my best guess and that changing one's mind is allowed and even ought to be encouraged.



It well could be that Texas, Alabama, and Florida, in whichever order you chose to rank them, are indeed the three best teams in the country. But if I were voting today I'd probably rank two teams ahead of them. Now, don't laugh. Snickering is okay, but please no raucus outbursts of laughter. I think the best team in the country at the moment is Oregon, which dismantled a good, but admittedly not great, USC team Saturday night, 47-20. I mean this was an old-fashioned A No. 1 butt stomping of a team that has ruled its conference for nearly a decade under Pete Carroll and rarely finishes out of the top five. And it was no fluke. Previously, Oregon had walloped California, which at the time was in the top 10 or so in the rankings, 42 -3. The week after that the Ducks quacked all over Washington State, 52-6 and only the week before their demolition of the Trojans had laid the wood to Washington, 43-19



I watched most of the Oregon-USC game and here's what I saw. I saw quarterback Jeremiah Masoli rush for 164 yards and pass for 222 more. I saw halfback LaMichael James run for 183 yards. In all, Oregon rolled up 613 yards against a team reputed to have one of the best defenses in the country. It was simply an awesome display. So I'd vote Oregon No. 1? No, I wouldn't. It's not because the Ducks lost their season opener. I've seen Notre Dame do that and still win a national title. No, it's not the fact that they lost, but who they lost to--Boise State.

That's not a rap at Boise State. Au contraire, the reason I wouldn't make Oregon No.1 is because that's where I'd have Boise State. I know, I know, Boise State has played a one-game season. But what a game! The Broncos literally strangled Oregon in a 19-8 season opening victory. The team that got 613 yards against Southern Cal? It had 14 yards in the first half--and no first downs--against Boise State . Its star runner, La Garrette Blount, carried eight times for minus five yards and those numbers have yet to change, since Blount was suspended for the rest of the season after slugging a Boise State player in the jaw after the game. Blount, with the help of mentors like Tony Dungy and his coach, Chip Kelly, reportedly has tried hard to make amends and there is a good chance he will be reinstated for this week-end's game at Stanford. With or without Blount, Oregon should beat Stanford and everyone else on its schedule. Boise, too, will likely run the table. But finish one-two in the BCS standings? Not a chance. Football writers, no matter what their personal politics, are as conservative as Rush Limbaugh when it comes to voting in the polls. It'll be Florida and Texas in the Rose bowl Jan. 7. Book it.