Everyone knows that the only fair way to get a true national champion in college football is to implement some kind of playoff.
And I do mean everyone.
That includes all those university presidents who refuse to give us one, pretending to care about the athletes and academics and even the bowls when, really, what they care about most is the money.
So, with no possibility of a playoff in the foreseeable future, what's the next-best option? How can college football avoid the Justice Department investigation threatened by Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch last summer in the wake of attacks on the Bowl Championship Series by representatives of the excluded Mountain West Conference? How can the BCS, absent a playoff, make sure all deserving teams, regardless of conference affiliation, get a shot at the title? Here's how: Expand the six BCS conferences.
Each of them - the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern and Pacific 10 - should be required to grow to 16 members, be split into two eight-team divisions and play a conference championship game.
Only the six conference champions would be guaranteed a berth in a BCS bowl.
Only the six conference champions are eligible to play for the national championship.
The top two conference champions would be chosen - using either the BCS rankings or, perhaps, a selection committee similar to what is used for the NCAA basketball tournament - to play in the national championship game.
The other four would play in the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls against at-large teams. Or they could play against each other. It doesn't matter.
All anyone really cares about is the title bout.
That's why an overwhelming majority of college football fans want a playoff.
That's what the university presidents don't seem to understand, or don't want to.
So this might work.
This might be the next-best thing.
At the very least, using this conference-expansion format would increase the number of teams guaranteed an opportunity to play their way into the championship chase to 96.
Sure, some off-Broadway teams still would be left out. But they're shut out now. Besides, you're not going to see the likes of Akron, Utah State, Middle Tennessee and North Texas making a national championship push, anyway, no matter what system is used.
And you can be sure plenty of folks - some schools, some BCS conferences, some second-tier conferences that would lose members - won't want to go along with this plan.
Notre Dame might not want to join the Big Ten or any other league. The SEC might not want to add Southern Mississippi or Troy. The Western Athletic Conference might not want to lose Boise State, Fresno State, Louisiana Tech and Hawaii.
Heck, the Mountain West might press for inclusion in the BCS rather than lose its marquee members and become irrelevant, if not obsolete.
This isn't a perfect plan.
There is no perfect plan, other than a playoff.
But somebody needs to do something - because here we go again, relying on those silly computers rankings and fatally flawed polls, guessing at which teams deserve a shot at the national championship.
The season's first BCS poll was released earlier this week. Seven of the top 25 teams are unbeaten. Thirteen have one loss.
Yet, we're not even out of October and most of the so-called college football experts say the national championship pairing is set, as long as No. 1 Florida and No. 2 Alabama don't lose before they meet in the SEC title game and No. 3 Texas remains undefeated.
If that happens, we'll get the SEC champion versus the Longhorns in the BCS Big Game.
We'll get that marquee matchup even if Iowa and Cincinnati, both from BCS conferences, finish their seasons without a loss. We'll get that matchup even if Boise State and Texas Christian, both from non-BCS conferences, finish unbeaten.
We might even get that matchup if Florida or Alabama gets upset; they still meet in the SEC championship game; and the one-loss team wins.
That's not right. That's certainly not fair. That's why there ought to be a playoff.
Short of that? Maybe expanding the conferences, creating more conference championship games and getting more teams into the mix would help. But something needs to change.
Everyone knows that.
RAY MCNULTY'S BCS EXPANSION PLAN
(*: Suggested new conference members)
ATLANTIC COAST: Boston College Clemson Duke Florida State Georgia Tech Maryland Miami North Carolina North Carolina State Virginia Virginia Tech Wake Forest *Central Florida *East Carolina *Florida Atlantic *Navy
BIG EAST: Cincinnati Connecticut Louisville Pittsburgh Rutgers South Florida Syracuse West Virginia *Army *Bowling Green *Buffalo *Florida International *Marshall *Memphis *Temple *Tulane
BIG TEN: Illinois Indiana Iowa Michigan Michigan State Minnesota Northwestern Ohio State Penn State Purdue Wisconsin *Central Michigan *Miami (Ohio) *Northern Illinois *Notre Dame *Western Michigan
BIG 12: Baylor Colorado Iowa State Kansas Kansas State Missouri Nebraska Oklahoma Oklahoma State Texas Texas A&M Texas Tech *Air Force *Colorado State *Texas Christian *Tulsa
SOUTHEASTERN: Alabama Arkansas Auburn Florida Georgia Kentucky Louisiana State Mississippi Mississippi State South Carolina Tennessee Vanderbilt *Houston *Louisiana Tech *Southern Mississippi *Troy
PACIFIC 10 Arizona Arizona State California Oregon Oregon State Southern California Stanford UCLA Washington Washington State *Brigham Young *Boise State *Fresno State *Hawaii *UNLV *Utah
(Ray McNulty is sports columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. E-mail him at ray.mcnulty(at)scripps.com. On the Web at www.tcpalm.com.)
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