Trusting BCS a bad idea

The same people who said LSU was the best team in college football all season had to concede that Alabama was the far better team Monday night.

So who’s really No. 1?

That depends on whether you buy into the Bowl Championship Series’ version of a national title. Remember that after you strip away the pseudo-science, fuzzy math and constant tweaks, the BCS champion is still decided by a poll of coaches – and a prearranged one at that.

So maybe the only thing everyone can agree on is that when LSU coach Les Miles said after the game, “That’s for the voters to figure,” he certainly wasn’t lobbying his fellow coaches. They are required to put the winner of the BCS title game on the top line of their final ballot, which, as one frequent critic of the cartel noted, is “like a North Korean election.”

Alabama was the overwhelming No. 1 choice in the final Associated Press poll of writers and broadcasters as well, but not unanimous.

The Tide rolled up 55 first-place votes among the 60 ballots cast; Oklahoma State got four and LSU got the final one. It’s that lone vote for the Tigers, though, that’s stuck in the craw of the BCS faithful the day after, likely because the guy who cast it, Erik Gee of KNML-AM in Albuquerque, N.M., said he intended to pick LSU no matter how the rematch turned out. And it turns out he’s got plenty to back him up.

Alabama and LSU are 1-1 head-to-head. LSU, in addition to being the SEC champion. The Tigers were 5-1 against teams that finished in the final AP Top 25, and 8-1 against teams ranked at the time they played; Alabama was 2-1 and 4-1 in those situations.

We used to call the national championship “mythical,” and despite the Frankenstein-like creation that is the BCS and until there’s a playoff, it will stay that way.

Speaking of change, the BCS is promising to do that for the umpteenth time. For all the fake promises in the past, there’s actually a chance a four-team playoff could result. Don’t count on it.