For the third time in four years the ill-conceived Bowl Championship Series failed to achieve its self-proclaimed goal of indisputably determining college football's national champion. While the BCS computers calmly designated the University of Oklahoma and Louisiana State University as the two teams to play for the championship, the human polls (one made up of coaches pledged to support the computers' findings) selected the University of Southern California as the nation's best.

It is difficult to feel any sympathy for Southern California, however. Both the school and the Pacific-10 Conference already are calling for changes to the current system to prevent similar travesties in the future. But it is disingenuous for the Trojans, their conference or, for that matter, anyone connected with the BCS to bemoan a format they themselves created cavalierly, and with no regard for the Division I football programs outside their own ranks.

This year's fiasco is a painful reminder that college football still has not developed a legitimate process for determining the Division I-A national champion. We have gone from a bowl alliance to a bowl coalition to the BCS, which combines a mixture of polls and ratings (presumably designed to cancel out each other's imperfections) to determine which two teams ought to play for the national title. Despite BCS claims that this concoction has rescued college football from the imagined evils of a playoff, it brings us no closer to determining a true champion than we were 50 years ago when both the AP and UPI voted their own separate winners.

Ironically, one of the victims of this arrangement is Division I-A football itself. BCS access and revenue is reserved for only six conferences and the University of Notre Dame, 63 schools overall. At a time when the NCAA is expanding championship brackets and opportunities in almost all other sports, the leaders of Division I-A football are limiting such experiences for their athletes. Fifty-four of the 117 schools that play Division I-A football have been disenfranchised by the BCS. Division I-A football is now the only NCAA sport where coaches and athletes cannot automatically qualify to play for their national championship by winning their respective conferences. In every other sport, win your league and you are in the championship field.

Forget poor Southern California. The victims here are the non-BCS leagues. Two years ago, Brigham Young University of the Mountain West Conference was 12-0 heading into its final regular-season game when the Cougars were "released" by the BCS to explore other bowl opportunities. And three years earlier Brigham Young was left out of the BCS mix (then called the "Coalition") despite being ranked sixth in the country. Nothing quite so egregious occurred this season, although, unlike the case in other NCAA sports, the likes of Miami University (Ohio) and Boise State University will not have a Cinderella shot at the national title.

The situation cries out for a Division I-A football playoff that accommodates the champions of the 10 Division I-A football conferences and six at-large selections. Any playoff plan that is limited simply to the 16 highest ranked teams in a poll would be just as unfair as the BCS system, and would be inconsistent with the philosophical guidelines that govern all other NCAA championships.

While many BCS folks are loathe to admitting as much, the issue here is fairness. The NCAA has established criteria for a league to be officially classified as a Division I-A football conference. If so qualified, that league's coaches and athletes should not be denied a chance to play for the national championship in their sport. There should be no phony outcries over the season being lengthened, thereby affecting academic achievement. Divisions I-AA, II and III all have 16- to 28-team playoffs with many schools playing 14, 15 or even 16 games. Even without a Division I-A playoff this year, Kansas State University played 15 games, while five other schools played 14.

And there should be little hand-wringing over a playoff dismantling the bowl system. Certainly, a playoff will significantly affect the bowls. But any second-tier bowl that can survive the BCS can also weather a playoff. An early loser in the playoff could still go to a bowl, just as the loser in a conference championship game does now. Candidly, the main reason coaches would hate to have fewer bowls is that it would mean reduced opportunities for them to earn bonus money, and no chance to label a 6-6 (or even 6-7) season a success because of a bowl appearance. However, it is wrong to oppose a playoff that denies a legitimate Division I-A conference champion the chance to play for the national championship simply to preserve a system that protects the opportunity for an eighth-place team in the Big 12 to play in a third-tier bowl.

Maybe the BCS is worried about having to share the money a playoff would bring. But the bet here is that a playoff would generate more revenue for everyone. It is incongruous to me that while CBS is paying an average of $545 million a year for the television and marketing rights to the NCAA basketball tournament through 2013 (a minimum of $6 billion overall), no one even knows what a comparable Division I-A football playoff is worth. A Swiss-based sports marketing and licensing firm (ISL) not long ago estimated that a playoff could earn $350 million annually for Division I-A, or at least three times what the BCS is generating. While this windfall would not be entirely incremental to the overall bowl payout pool (second-tier bowls not included in the playoff would probably be forced to reduce payouts, if they survived at all), the guess here is that the BCS conferences could earn more than they do currently, and the rest of Division I-A could benefit substantially, as well.

However, we will never know the value of a Division I-A playoff unless there is competitive bidding for the event. CBS paid a premium for NCAA basketball because other networks were at the table, but ABC doesn't have that problem with the BCS. Because the ABC/Rose Bowl contract goes through 2005, there cannot be competitive bidding for a BCS package that includes the Rose Bowl until 2006. Thus, with no competition in sight, ABC is reportedly paying the BCS a relatively modest $110 million a year for exclusive control of the games that determine college football's national champion.

In the meantime, while acknowledging BCS assertions that the major bowls, conferences and television networks have always been partners and have dominated the bowl picture, it must also be said that only since the advent of the BCS have these groups so openly conspired to design a national-championship scenario at the obvious exclusion of the other 46 percent of the Division I-A membership.

Still, the bitterness and frustration felt by the non-BCS schools is muted. "Anti-trust lawsuit" is a term quietly mentioned from time to time, but the intimidation factor is significant. Non-BCS coaches, athletics directors, presidents and conference commissioners aspire to similar positions at BCS schools and leagues, so the stakes are high and the dirty politics real. There also is the implied threat that if the NCAA membership outside the BCS conferences makes too big a fuss about the current system, the BCS schools could secede and establish their own organization.

Some would say this has already happened -- that by virtue of BCS oversight of the football championship (and given the relatively new voting structure of the NCAA, whereby conferences rather than individual schools vote on NCAA legislation), the "group of six" is now firmly in charge of everything, including important committee assignments. Busy Division I-A college presidents have ceded too much authority to their schools' respective conference offices, and allowed conference commissioners to fill the leadership vacuum. This development has left many schools feeling isolated from their national organization, and discouraged that any concern for the greater good has given way to the special interests of the BCS conferences.

But today the BCS is an easy target, a system that is not only self-serving, but also is so inept that its own members feel victimized by the process. If that were the worst of it, perhaps we could just add another computer and move on. But there is a much bigger problem -- the fact that the most major of college championships is being conducted outside the authority of the NCAA and, in the process, denying thousands of Division I-A football players fair access to competing for the national title in their sport.

Sorry, USC, but at least you had your chance.

Rick Bay is recently retired from college athletics administration after 30 years of involvement in intercollegiate athletics, most recently as director of athletics at San Diego State University.