The first BCS rankings of the year have come out, and the sports writers are pissed, as usual. Oklahoma's #2 in both the coaches and writers poll, but they're #3 in the BCS. Horror! Outrage! Lowly Utah is #4 in the BCS. How dare they!

The BCS rankings are based on three things -- the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll, the AP writers poll and an average of six computer-based polls. The first of those -- the coaches and writers -- are polls where people vote on who's the best team. This differs from every other sport in the entire world, in that the winner is decided by ballot; it's actually more of an election than a sport. (It should be noted, in fact, that there's no such thing as the NCAA Division I-A football championship, there are just the trophies that the operators of those two polls give away.) The six computer-based polls are decided based on things like win/loss record, opponents' win/loss record, total point differential, etc.

There are two camps about why this violates something sacrosanct. Some believe that we never needed anything other than the electoral system. There's no need to field a championship game, they protested, when we can simply vote on who's best. The great thing about this system is that teams could continue to float by on last year's reputation forever. Another year, another preseason poll with Notre Dame in the top five. On the other side are those who demand nothing short of a March Madness-style playoff system. Decide it on the field, they howl!

Look, everyone who enjoys sports in any way understands that a playoff would be best, but that's not going to happen in the foreseeable future. And voting for who the champion should be is just stupid -- just ask the 1994 Penn State team. The fact is, the BCS is the best compromise we can get right now. The computer polls dull the tendency of human voters to undervalue west coast teams, small conference teams and Cinderella teams, while overvaluing last year's big guns. And in fact, there has yet to be a major conference team go undefeated in the regular season and not get invited to the BCS championship game. That's just as it should be -- you win all your games, you're the champion. There was a "split" championship last year -- that is, the polls elected different teams champion -- when nobody was undefeated and three teams finished with one loss. Everybody blamed the BCS for this. People, please. The BCS didn't do that, the big moneymen behind the bowl system did that. Obviously a playoff system is better, but that's not happening. Deal with it and be glad we not just leaving it all up to Craig James and his fevered ego anymore.