This is an opportunity to make sure that everyone -- members of Congress, the media, academic leaders and college football fans -- understands the history of the BCS and its predecessor arrangements, and how the BCS arrangement creates the opportunity for all Division I-A colleges to compete for a national football championship and participate in other high-quality bowl match-ups.

The BCS was developed to answer the public's demand for a better system for determining college football's national champion and to create other high-quality bowl games. Before the formation of the BCS and its predecessor arrangements, the bowl system had been able to match the top two teams in the nation only nine times in 45 years.

Under the bowl system in place before the BCS, last year's match-up between unbeaten Ohio State University and the University of Miami (Florida) would not have been possible. Ohio State would have played in the Rose Bowl against the Pacific-10 champion, Washington State, and Miami would have played in another bowl game against a different team. If both teams had won (or lost), there would not necessarily have been a consensus national champion.

There often are questions about why there are guaranteed slots for six conference champions. As an initial matter, it is important to understand that these six bowl slots make up only 10.7 percent of all the bowl slots available (56). But, more important, these guaranteed slots are a necessity if the BCS arrangement, and thus any national championship game, is to exist at all.

Under the bowl system as it existed before the BCS and its predecessors (the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance), each of the conferences whose champions have guaranteed slots in a BCS bowl had a bowl arrangement for its champion or had been offered such an arrangement. For example, the Big Ten and Pac-10 have had a relationship with the Rose Bowl for more than 50 years.

To make a national championship arrangement possible, it is imperative to have each of the six conferences with guaranteed slots participate. Teams currently in those conferences, and Notre Dame, have won all but one national championship since World War II. But none of those conferences has any reason to give up a valuable bowl slot that it is able to obtain on its own if the new arrangement does not promise a slot at least as valuable. For example, neither the Big Ten nor the Pac-10 would be willing to alter its historic relationship with the Rose Bowl unless it has the opportunity to compete in a championship game.

The BCS arrangement also benefits college football fans by allowing those BCS bowls not hosting the championship game to create pairings between deserving teams. Historic relationships between certain conferences and bowl games are nothing new. Yet before the formation of the Bowl Coalition in 1992, the New Year's Day bowl games that had open slots would often effectively commit to a team after seven or eight weeks of the season.

If a team went on a late-season losing skid, the bowl often had no choice but to invite that team anyway because other highly-ranked teams had paired off with other bowl games. One of the major innovations of the Bowl Coalition was to allow the bowls to defer their team selections until the full results of the season were in, thus creating the best match-ups possible. The BCS retains that benefit.

The BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, which consists of university presidents from the six conferences, is confident that the BCS arrangement fully complies with antitrust laws. The purpose of those laws is to ensure that competing entities do not harm consumers by agreeing to restrict their output of goods or services. The BCS easily passes that test.

The BCS has no detrimental impact on the number of college football bowl games or the number of teams that play in them. It does not reduce the opportunities available for advertisers or others who sponsor bowl games. In fact, the BCS arrangement improves output by giving college football fans something that they have never had before: an annual national championship game between the top two teams in the nation. Moreover, while the BCS arrangement itself involves only four bowls, the number of bowl games has continued to grow, giving every Division I-A institution a greater opportunity for postseason play.

BCS revenues also are shared with those conferences that do not participate in a BCS game every year. Over the eight-year span of the BCS arrangement, the six conferences whose champions have automatic berths in BCS bowl games will pay the other five Division I-A conferences and eight Division
I-AA conferences some $42 million. That's an average of about $100,000 per school. Under the old bowl system, those institutions shared in none of the revenues from the BCS bowls.

We do not know what the future holds for college football. Yet, because the BCS is a short-term arrangement, it can be adjusted to take account of changes on the field and in the marketplace. While no postseason system will ever be immune from all criticism, for the first time in college football history, fans can look forward to a national championship game every year. Indeed, the BCS has opened bowl arrangements more so than they have ever been, and those benefits have been achieved within the framework of the bowl system that has been part of the great tradition of college football. That is precisely the kind of conduct encouraged and protected by the nation's antitrust laws.

Graham Spanier is the president of Pennsylvania State University. William Monts is an attorney who represents the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences with respect to the Bowl Championship Series.