I suppose we should be focusing on the return of Allen Iverson or the Eagles most recent win over a hapless opponent. Or perhaps even the fact that the Flyers need to get a win tonight against Montreal. Desperately. But the Iverson thing is a boutique human interest story that has no bearing on the outcome of the NBA season. And there’s no point in raining on Eagles fans’ parades by pointing out how they still haven’t beaten a good NFL team this year. And the Flyers, well, nobody cares.

Inspired somewhat by the Tim Donaghy NBA referee fixing saga that is being brushed aside by the same corporate media sources that make countless millions from the illusion of a legitimately competitive NBA is the following point: the BCS is a organization that conspires, year after year, to concentrate revenue among a select group of universities and football conferences at the expense of others. A friend mentioned to me yesterday what a joke it is that the BCS paired the two non-BCS conference teams in its bowl rotation, Boise State and TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. This is the most recent and most egregious example of the country club mentality that the BCS employs. More on that soon.

To those fair minded observers, TCU deserves to be playing for the national title against Alabama. Texas has looked horrible in its last 2 games against Texas A&M and Nebraska, winning the latter on a questionable decision to put time on the clock at the end of the game (if you’re looking for any more evidence that the conferences conspire to see their top teams win, just watch any Alabama or Florida game this season). But because it was determined before the season that the Big 12 was the second-best conference in the land, no amount of bumbling (other than a loss) was going to get its winner excluded from the title game.

Frankly, Cincinnati and TCU are both better teams than Texas. After the luster surrounding names like Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State melts away, it’s clear that both TCU and UC have played tougher schedules and have looked more convincing in winning all their games (TCU moreso, I believe) than Texas. Of course, the ludicrous month-long layoff that the NCAA puts in place between the end of the season and the marquis bowl games means that the championship game will be played between two teams that may or may not resemble the teams that just beat Florida and Nebraska.

With all this said, the Fiesta Bowl matchup between Boise State and TCU shows one thing on the part of the BCS: that they don’t want to deal with the embarassment of having one of those teams beat up on any of the other BCS teams. The BCS learned it lesson in 2006 when Boise State beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl and even moreso last year when Utah crushed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. And the lesson is to put the non-members in the servants’ quarters for dinner so as to not embarrass the dues-paying members in the grand salon. If TCU played Florida, they may well beat them and help dismantle the illusion that the SEC (insert any of the top-6 conferences here) is actually better than the Mountain West or the WAC.

The reality is that the system is simply not imperfect, it’s fixed. Like the NBA and its refereeing, there are financial considerations that will trump fair play. After all, sports is big business and what big business has any of us ever known that will not be motivated primarily by profit-making?

People poo-poo Orrin Hatch and Barack Obama for going after the BCS and its monopolistic and anti-competitive practices but college football is a multi-billion dollar business just like the telephone companies, the railroads and the financial markets. It’s time for legislators to step-in and make sure that fans are consuming a legitimate product and that the 57 FBS schools that aren’t part of the BCS conferences get a fair shake at the bundles of cash that attend the college football postseason.