The ABCs of the BCS.

• Author: BARRETT, WAYNE M.
• Position: College football's Bowl Championship Series

"HE WHO LOSES LAST, LOSES WORST," is how one Florida State University fan assesses the college football rankings. Adds another Seminole supporter, "Everyone is always complaining that this is the only sport where the championship is not won on the field, but is that necessarily a bad thing?"

In other words, here we go again. For the next four months or so, until just after New Years, the battle will rage--on paper and on the field--as to who is No. I (as well as numbers 2 to 25) in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. And in what has become an annual rite during the last decade, the rules that determine what is no longer supposed to be a "mythical" champion have changed.

The Bowl Championship Series, now entering its fourth season, this year will include a quality-win component which will award bonus points for beating a top-15 team in the BCS rankings. Also, there will be less importance given to margin of victory.

"They're looking for a perfect system, and there is no perfect system," says the first Florida State fan. Adds the second, "Every time there's a controversy, they stick in a new rule."

The controversy last year was that Florida State went to the championship game (where the Seminoles lost to the undefeated University of Oklahoma), instead of the University of Miami. Each had only one loss, but Florida State's was to Miami. Still, the Seminoles were ranked second by the BCS at the end of the regular season--the Sooners were No. 1--so they automatically went to the title game. Had this year's new rules been in effect last season, Miami, not Florida State, likely would have faced Oklahoma.

(Since 1993, coach Bobby Bowden's Seminoles have been to the national championship game five times, including the last three, winning twice. They've been to a major bowl every year since 1991, and have enjoyed 14 straight 10-win and top-5 seasons, thus the reason for this columnist's BCS consultation with the two biggest Seminole fanatics this side of the Mason-Dixon line).

"Actually," says the first Florida State fan, "what killed Miami was strength of schedule. These schedules are planned four to five years in advance. So Miami put McNeese State on its schedule [when running up the score, even against lesser opponents, helped a team's rankings] before there was a BCS ranking system."

And that's bad why? "Because the strength of schedule component--which has a million quirks in it that are way too complicated to explain--really frowns...