Sun rises in east. Dog bites man. Mike Tyson gets arrested. Bowl Championship Series fucked again.

Any other stunning, never-saw-that-coming headlines I need to include here?

Once again the BS BCS, the NCAA’s laughable insult to the very concepts of competition and moral decency, has failed, and this time they’ve simply outdone themselves.

They finally managed to get LSU, a more than worthy contender, into the “championship” game, but the flagrant back-room conspiracy required to do so was ridiculous. Let’s examine some of the nuances of this year’s college football travesty.

If not for an obscene choke job in Morgantown Saturday night the best team from the best conference – LSU and the SEC, respectively – would not have been allowed to compete for the national title. That the BCS somehow got that part right only proves that sometimes things work out despite the system, not because of it.

The best team in the second best conference – Southen Cal, probably the best team in the nation at this moment – will not be allowed to compete for the national title.

The best team in the third best conference – Big 12 champ Oklahoma – thanks for showing up. Buh-bye.

Here’s another important artifact of the NCAA’s work of genius. You can go undefeated and not be allowed to even compete for a shot at the title.

Just for fun, let’s remind everybody that in their next-to-last games of the season, the two teams playing for the “national championship” each lost on their home fields to unranked opponents.

Last week Missouri knocked off Kansas to win the Big 12 North. So who is the second Big 12 rep to a BCS bowl game? Kansas, going to Miami for the Orange.

There’s more. Georgia, which finished second in the SEC East, is going to a BCS Bowl – the Sugar – instead of the team they finished behind, Tennessee.

It gets even better. There was a scenario whereby LSU wouldn’t get to the title game, but Georgia – which didn’t even make it to the SEC title game – would. Arguably, this is what should have happened – last night #1 Missouri and #2 West Virginia lost, so #3 Ohio State and #4 Georgia move up, right? This is how the polls work 99 times out of 100.

Uhh, no, because here’s where that last-minute engineering thing kicked in. Voters clearly realized that the system was hutzed to the gills (it’s unclear whether they realize that they’re a big part of why that’s the case) and that it would be, well, wrong to rank Georgia ahead of LSU. (Pretend, if you can, that the system didn’t leapfrog Kansas over Missouri for the Orange Bowl and that Georgia will be appearing in the Sugar instead of their division’s champion, Tennessee, by the way, as you contemplate the mysteries of these events.) Never mind that they had Georgia ranked ahead of LSU last week and that UGa didn’t lose – which is the main criterion for deciding movement in the polls. Today’s transparent flip-flop by the voters is an acknowledgment of their own stupidity. They appreciate you not noticing.

But wait, you say – UGa didn’t lose, but LSU did play and win a very big game against SEC East champ Tennessee. So that ought to count for something, right?

Well, that would be a compelling argument in the absence of one inconvenient bit of fact. Georgia didn’t play and got passed over. But Ohio State didn’t play for the last two weeks and they moved up. If ever you needed proof that the polls and all those associated with them are a pack of monkey-greased asspipes, that ought to do it. One team backs in by not playing, while another team (and I’d love to see Georgia on the field against OSU – I’d take the Dawgs and lay two touchdowns right now) gets punished for it.

By the way, LSU also leapfrogged Virginia Tech, which was ranked a spot ahead of the Tigers in last week’s poll and which yesterday won its conference championship game. Now wait a sec, you say – LSU and the Hokies played head to head this season and LSU stomped their balls off, so LSU ought to be ahead of them.

Right. So why was VT ranked ahead of them last week, then?

In sum, here’s what you need to know about the Bowl “Championship” Series:

The voters are tools. The coaches are corrupt. (The current system allows about half of the coaches in D1 – excuse me, the Bowl Championship Division – to tell the boosters that “hey, we went to a bowl game! And half of those get to say “we won a bowl game! God bless accountability.) The athletic directors are corrupt. The university presidents are corrupt. The championship will never be decided on the field as long as you’re alive because it would cost a group of men with bad haircuts and even worse sportcoats a lot of money. Anybody who refers to the winner of this year’s big game in the Superdome as the “national champion” should be flogged, flayed, de-narded, slathered in pork gravy and chased naked through a pit of half-starved Jack Russell Terriers.

In case you haven’t been counting, I’ve now written around 900 words without once using “playoff.” So pass the Tostitos, fuck ’em all, and enjoy your meaningless exhibition season.

I’ll see everybody in March.