ESPN Commentary

We can elect an African-American as our country's 44th president and put not one, but two, exploration rovers on Mars, but we can't devise a college football playoff system that makes everyone happy?

That's not exactly true. Every other NCAA sport has a playoff or postseason competition that determines the national champion without the help of, say, Jeff Sagarin and his laptop. And guess what? The earth hasn't been swallowed by hell's fires. Urban Meyer hasn't called another classless timeout. Beer bongs haven't been outlawed.

USC coach Pete Carroll had it right, of course, when he recently said the BCS "stinks." Penn State's Joe Paterno had it right when he playfully mocked the system, saying, "Is it the BCS or the BSC?" The soon-to-be most powerful man on the planet -- President-elect Barack Obama -- had it right when he said college football needs a playoff system.

We already have one. It's in the Football Championship Subdivision, previously known as Division I-AA. Appalachian State has won the past three championships.

Appy State played 11 regular-season games and four playoff games in each of the past three years. That's 15 games, two more than Paterno's team will play this season, one more than if Penn State played in a seeded, plus-one, bowl format (a championship game after the four BCS bowls) and the same amount if the Nittany Lions reached the finals of an eight-team, three-game playoff.

So the next time you hear university presidents say a major college football playoff would require too many games, remind them of the FCS format. Here's guessing they'll come up with another lame excuse.

Meanwhile, Dr. Drawl -- my good buddy, Ivan Maisel, who recently authored a must-buy book on college football -- defends the BCS by comparing it to home schooling. Just because it's different, he says, doesn't make it wrong.

But in this case, different isn't better. It's just different. It's also mind-numbingly dumb. The people who think this is the best we can do are the same people who think Roger Moore was a better Bond than Sean Connery.

For example, USC was ranked fifth in last week's BCS standings. This week, the Trojans are ranked seventh. Makes sense. They only beat Washington 56-0.

Just think if Carroll had done a Meyer and forgotten about sportsmanship. USC led 42-0 at halftime. He could have kept the pedal to the metal and maybe doubled that score by game's end. Knowing the BCS, the Trojans would have dropped to ninth in the standings.

For Carroll to rip the BCS means something. He has a long history of shrugging his shoulders and blowing off any questions about the merits and inner workings of the BCS. He was always an "it is what it is" kind of guy.

So when Carroll goes rogue, you should pay attention. Yes, he could be posturing and campaigning for his program. But he also spoke the truth when he said, "What is the criteria of the process? Is it to pick the team that has the best season, that has the season that you like the most and feel best about voting for? Or is it the best team at the end of the year, the team that would win a playoff system if you did have it?"

Good questions. And good luck getting answers to them. That's because there's nobody really in charge of the BCS. Carroll compared it to the Wizard of Oz. "Somebody behind that screen there, but we don't know who it is," he said.

The BCS is so screwed up nobody wants to take ownership. It gets passed around, like strep throat, every two years to assorted BCS conference commissioners. The Atlantic Coast Conference and coordinator John Swofford are stuck with it through 2009. Then it goes to the Big East.

Poor Swofford. He has to put on a happy face even though the BCS is as legit as a Sarah Palin phone conversation with the "president" of France.

Right now, he's sweating out the possibility of six undefeated teams (No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Texas Tech, No. 3 Penn State, No. 8 Utah, No. 10 Boise State and No. 17 Ball State). If it ends that way, good luck explaining to JoePa why his team got squeezed out of the championship game.

What happens if Utah and Boise State are the only unbeaten teams but neither one reaches the BCS championship?

What happens if one-loss Florida wins its last four games (including South Carolina and at Florida State), beats Alabama in the SEC championship and somehow leapfrogs over Penn State and into the BCS title game against Texas Tech? (Our ESPN BCS numbers cruncher Brad Edwards says the scenario is possible.) And what happens if Florida inches past Tech, say, 21-20, but Penn State somehow overpowers USC in the Rose Bowl? We could have a split national championship: Florida in the BCS, Penn State in the Associated Press poll (which is not part of the BCS formula).

What happens if there's more knuckleheaded voting in the sometimes goofy Harris poll, which counts for one-third of the BCS standings?

What happens as more coaches are tempted to pour on the points to impress those Harris and USA Today poll voters? Margin of victory doesn't matter to the computers, but it could matter to those voters. More sportsmanship goes down the tubes.

Unless Obama signs an executive order outlawing the BCS or creates a cabinet-level position to address the situation (Secretary of the Postseason? … I'm available), we're officially chained to this thing for another year, probably a lot longer once the pending TV negotiations are done. Anyway, the threesome of the Big Ten, Pac-10 and Rose Bowl -- televised by ESPN on ABC through 2014 -- says it has no interest in a playoff scenario.

Sigh. So I'm left to root for six unbeaten teams, chaos, stammering explanations from BCS officials and public outrage.

And I'll root for one other thing. Selection Sunday for the FCS playoffs is Nov. 23. The first quarterfinal game is Nov. 29.

Go, Appy State!

Gene Wojciechowski is the senior national columnist for ESPN.com. You can contact him at gene.wojciechowski@espn3.com.