The BCS should be thanking the AP for this decision. While I have previously praised the BCS for doing what it was designed to do, match up the #1 and #2 teams in a bowl game, I think that the design was always in question. The formula changed too often and was often changed too drastically to make up for what was seen as the flaw from the season before. Now the AP has given the BCS committee a chance to do something that is better for the whole sport in general. They will be able to form a great committee to decide on the best matchups for the sport. Important for the BCS will be to get the NCAA involved in the process and let the decisions be finally seen as legitimate. Let Myles Brand and the conference commissioners be involved. And include all of the current conferences in Division 1-A, not just the ones who get all of the television deals. Yes, that means the SunBelt should be there. If the major conferences get to beat up on Louisiana-Monroe and Louisiana-Lafayette during the season, then they should get to be part of the bowl selection process too.

At the same time, someone should wave a finger at the AP. The AP claims they never gave consent for their poll to be used in the BCS formula. It is interesting that it took them 7 years to find out that the AP was a component of something that gets broadcast on the television each week of the football season and then gets trashed in the media for the rest of the year. The AP should have never entered if they thought they wouldn't want to be part of this at some point. To wait until they were criticized for integrity was waiting much too long to get out without a black mark on their record. Where did the AP go wrong? For starters, if the coaches were going to protect their members by not exposing the final poll voting (which I think was a mistake. Everyone's final ballot should have been public), then the AP should have held back their ballots.

Next, it was beyond reproach for one of the members of the poll to be criticized by fans for not voting Auburn in the top 2 in the country just because he worked in Alabama. To make matters worse, when the writer wrote a well thought out piece defending his vote, something that his editors should have been proud of, he was cut down by those same editors in the paper. The AP should have defended that voting member for having the integrity to vote with his brain and not with his heart. And while we pride freedom of the press in this country and the editor is entitled to her opinion, it is not appropriate for her to call out her writer in the paper and say that he was rude to the fans who wrote to him. If she had a problem with what he published, then call him out in private, or don't print his article. By calling him out in public, you add to all the poor press that the BCS has gotten and you potentially ruin a good man's career. It is unfortunate that the AP can't do something to punish her.

Finally, the AP needs to look at how they select the voters for the poll and part of the selection criteria should be prior voting performance. That would ensure that the three voters in Texas who moved their vote in order for the Longhorns to pass Cal in the final BCS standings would never get another chance to vote in the poll again. Granted, there was a lot of pressure on the voters this year. Instead of just the number of the ranking, it was the number of points that a team received which mattered. Suddenly, moving a team a few spots at the right moment could make a big change in the final tally. However, for these three voters to move their votes on the final week of the season, when Texas didn't even play, and to have all of the voters be from Texas, was too much of a coincidence to be kosher. The AP should look at a rolling list of voters, where no voter can participate for more than 3 years in a row. If there is something strange about their voting patterns, that voter should be removed early, and potentially for good. In this way, you make sure that good voters are always on staff and the actions of one person, or a small group can not adversely affect the final poll.

The AP got a black eye on this one, but at the same time, they hit the BCS back with a nice right hook themselves. The BCS in this case is the one with the raw steak to put on their shiner. Let's all hope, for the sake of college football, that they do the right thing with that steak and fix the entire scope of the game. The game itself has already taken too many black eyes this year and can't afford to have the true knockout punch come.