To fix the BCS, add one game

There's been a lot of grumbling and hand-wringing over the Bowl Championship Series the past two weeks, and rightfully so.
No matter which direction we turn there seems to be contradiction.
The exclusion of Southern California from the national championship game, despite being ranked No. 1 in both the Associated Press poll, which is the opinion of the media, and the ESPN/USA Today poll, which is the opinion of the coaches, is, of course, the greatest contradiction.
For the second time in four years, a team -- Oklahoma -- that didn't win its own conference is playing for the national title. That's not quite as bad as in 2001, of course, when Nebraska didn't even win its division in the Big XII and got smoked in its last regular season game by Colorado, yet advanced to the championship game -- whereupon, the Cornhuskers got smoked again, by Miami.
So naturally, there have been calls for a playoff involving anywhere from four to 16 teams. Which, we all know, has about as much of happening as a tropical storm off Lake Erie in January.
Money talks
The biggest deterrent to a playoff, of course, is money. The bowls generate too much of it and the six BCS conferences get most of it, so much so that the bean counters in the athletic departments are loathe to abandon anything that's a guarantee for anything -- like a playoff -- that isn't.
The university presidents don't want an extended playoff because such a tournament might somehow give the impression that their schools are more interested in athletic success than academic integrity.
(These are the same university presidents, mind you, who think nothing of giving coaches multi-million dollar contracts or firing said coaches in mid-season, just like the professional teams.)
And the minor bowls don't want it, because it would mean the end of the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl presented by Cooper Tire during ESPN's Bowl Week sponsored by the dot-com flavor of the month.
And what would we do then?
Geeks and freaks
The worst contradictions, though, are the computer nerds who have sold college football a fake bill of goods like Harold Hill on his way to bilking a bunch of hick townsfolk in The Music Man.
We're told by Jeff Sagarin and his ilk that the media and coaches polls are bogus because, well, human error and bias color them. The computers, though, have no such bias.
Bull.
If there's no bias, how in the world can Sagarin and the others have a preseason poll? How can a computer rank teams before they haved played any games?
A 16-team playoff would be the ideal solution. The champions of all 11 Division I-A conferences would earn automatic bids, leaving room for five at-large teams. This season, for instance, Kansas State would have earned the Big XII's automatic bid, but Oklahoma and Texas would have still made the field as at-large teams.
The N.D. clause
The at-large provision also allows for Notre Dame to remain an independent.
The teams could be seeded based on the current BCS ranking system.
The first and second rounds would be played at home stadiums, starting the second Saturday of December. The semifinals and finals would be played at neutral sites in warm-weather cities.
OK, I know what you're thinking: there's no way all the factions would agree to abandoning the current bowls for a 16-team playoff.
I don't even believe they would go for 4- or 8-team setups.
But, I do think, because of the mess this year, a one-game, winner-take-all, national championship, to be played after all the bowls are contested, has a good chance of happening in the not to distant future.
In this scenario, there will still be the dot-com bowls in December and the big four in January. The six BCS conferences will make some concessions to the mid-majors but still essentially have almost-complete control, and perhaps they'll be able to decide the thing on the field.
XRob Todor is sports editor of The Vindicator. Write to him at todor@vindy.com.