Run for the hills -- the BCS lives!

We're at that point in college football's annual B-movie horror classic when the monster staggers back to its feet for the umpteenth time.
It's already been shot, stabbed and electrocuted, folded, mutilated and spindled, drowned, fricasseed and, most recently, flattened by a steamroller. But in the next moment, with the monster rising to its full height yet again, comes the awful realization: The BCS lives!
Dr. Frankenstein had nothing on the suits who brought the Bowl Championship Series to life. Like his creation, theirs also was a bad idea that's only gotten worse over time. It has turned college presidents into hypocrites, forced coaches to become beggars and turned off more fans than anything since Roseanne Barr put on a football uniform for the movie "Backfield in Motion."
But the BCS isn't going anywhere. Bloodied but unbowed by the news this week that The Associated Press would not allow its poll to be used in determining its rankings, Big East commissioner and former BCS boss Mike Tranghese promised yet another reincarnation after the organization meets in April.
"The BCS is here and it's going to continue. But the BCS is a target for all the playoff proponents. When something like this happens, they jump on it. They look at something like this as a crack. They don't understand the strong position of our presidents," he said.
Presidents' positionis hypocritical
Tranghese is right about that last point. A playoff system could incorporate the major bowls and bring in more money for everyone involved and is favored by a majority of the coaches, players and fans.
The real reason the college presidents won't go along is simple: They want to protect the six major conferences, four bowls and the TV network that control the BCS and decide how to divvy up the take. But the reason they offer is that a playoff would harm their student-athletes' chances at academic success. Please. Even an old-school authority like Penn State coach Joe Paterno isn't buying that line anymore.
"I think the college presidents allowing the BCS thing is a real, real shame," he said recently. "Whenever the talk turns to having some kind of a playoff, they say you can't miss classes and yet we've already got NCAA playoffs [in every other college sport] and everything else.
"I mean, who's kidding who?" Paterno added. "They've got to try to figure out a way to get rid of it and the hypocrisy of money, money, money."
It's small consolation, but the BCS is already hard at work -- not at legislating itself out of existence, or ending the hypocrisy, mind you, but on the "money, money, money" part. The organization just signed a four-year deal worth $320 million with Fox for the broadcast rights to the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar bowls from 2007-10 and the national title game from 2007-09. And credibility has never been high on the BCS' to-do list.
What formulacomes next?
Never mind that the AP poll comprised one-third of the formula the BCS used to draw up this season's rankings -- the coaches' poll and six computers made up the remaining two-thirds -- or that the writers and broadcasters were the only ones who made their votes public. The coaches, many of whom have contracts triggering handsome bonuses for appearances in BCS bowls -- have already indicated a willingness to stay on, and keeping the computers in the fold won't require anything more than a steady supply of electricity.
"We're just going to have to put our heads together," Tranghese said, "and come up with an alternative way of picking the teams for the 1-2 game."
Small wonder Tranghese was undaunted. Since they hijacked the postseason in 1998, the BCS and its old-boy network have had to revise the formula four times and the front-running scheme for alternative No. 5 is creation of a selection committee, similar to the one used for the NCAA's basketball tournament. The major difference, of course, is that after the basketball committee finishes seeding the teams, the championship is decided on the court.
The BCS won't go that far in reforming the system. And short of a playoff, it will never resolve the underlying flaw inherent in trying to seed a two-team tournament anytime there are three or more deserving contenders. But at least the monster will look different.
XJim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org.