Multiple unbeatens could mess with BCS

Not about the league’s TV deal.

Let’s not be silly.

But the 16-team playoff format the Mountain West commissioner has proposed for college football is a legitimate answer to making like a few hundred sticks of dynamite and blowing the Bowl Championship Series to smithereens.

Problem: His plan makes too much sense.

“What we are trying to do is offer an alternative with the current system,” Thompson told The Arizona Republic. “We have not been comfortable with the current system.”

That’s like saying UNLV coach Bobby Hauck isn’t comfortable with his team’s performance.

I don’t believe a playoff would ever happen as Thompson desires, because I don’t believe the cronies at the cartel would ever adopt such an open and fair system that allows so many leagues access to a title game.

Thompson proposed an eight-team playoff in 2009. It was rejected. Why would anyone believe those in the BCS would now choose to double such a format?

They haven’t spent this many years acting in selfish and unjust ways to change their minds now.

But a plus-one format or a four-team tournament ultimately could be adopted, because even those stubborn BCS folks are going to feel enough heat sooner or later, either from their own constituents or powerful political ones.

The former has a chance of happening sooner.

Root for chaos. Pray for perfection. College football kicks off today with 10 remaining undefeated teams, and, of those, eight play in BCS leagues.

Boise State and Houston don’t, meaning they’re viewed as important by the BCS formula as the janitor at a Fortune 500 company.

Houston is 6-0 and ranked 19th in the BCS standings. It has as much chance playing for a national championship as Kim Kardashian’s marriage does lasting past Christmas.

But it’s not the same for eight others.

History is pretty tough to fight this early in the process, still not late enough in a season to believe more than just a few teams will remain unbeaten.

Consider: In the past nine years, 79 teams were undefeated at this juncture of a given season. By the time bowl games kicked off, 23 were unbeaten.

Alabama or Louisiana State will lose when they meet in November, and Oklahoma or Oklahoma State also will fall.

Stanford could lose to Oregon or Notre Dame. Wisconsin could lose today at Michigan State or perhaps in a Big Ten championship game. Clemson could lose to Georgia Tech or a suddenly weaker South Carolina side given the rivalry aspect. Kansas State still must engage Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Texas.

But until a certain Utah attorney general moves forward with threats of an antitrust lawsuit against the BCS or Congress gets a lot more involved than it has, the playoff scenario can be accelerated by the following: that when bowl matchups are unveiled in December, four or five teams from BCS leagues have zeros for their numbers of losses.

It has happened twice before — Auburn in 2004 and Cincinnati in 2009 — that an undefeated team from a major conference was left out of the national championship game. Imagine if four or five were in the same season.

We have seen how those in Wisconsin react to a proposal about bargaining rights for public workers, so imagine the outcry and storming of the Capitol should the Badgers not make the championship game after finishing 13-0 with a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback and coming from the conference led by the most powerful commissioner — Jim Delany — nationally.

They would be just as bitter at Stanford with quarterback Andrew Luck as the featured star of an unbeaten team, and I’m guessing they can find a few computer science majors in Palo Alto, Calif., able to counter whatever data all the BCS geeks deliver when ranking teams.

You have to think BCS change could come in 2014. Pressure is building. Collars are tightening. The sort of TV revenues spoken about in Thompson’s plan are too stout to continue disregarding any playoff scenario.

I don’t think it will get to the 16 teams the Mountain West boss wants, and I’m not sure it gets to eight.

But be sure of this: Should four or five teams from major conferences end the season undefeated, meaning a few will be left out of the BCS national championship, hide the women and children and bolt the doors to the Capitol in Madison, Wis.

Hope for such chaos.

Pray for such perfection.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday on “Monsters of the Midday,” Fox Sports Radio 920 AM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.