Bowl Championship Series Commissioner Roy Kramer held his breath through most of the entire 1998 college football season. Week to week his hope was the final BCS poll would justify his beloved formula.

It did.

On the last day undefeated UCLA and Kansas State were both upset, tumbling the Bruins and Wildcats from the top ranks, leaving no controversy about the top two team in the nation. The BCS, AP, and Coaches all agreed -- Tennessee and Florida State should play in the inaugural BCS Championship game in the Fiesta Bowl.

The next year, Virginia Tech squeaked out a No. 2 ranking over once beaten Nebraska. Whew! Both undefeated teams, Florida State and Virginia Tech were in the final BCS Top 2. The AP and Coaches polls concurred. Television ratings were up, fans jammed the stadiums, money flowed like milk and honey, and the BCS was a hit.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Orange Bowl in 2000. Miami beat Florida State, but Washington beat Miami and the Seminoles were sent to the Sugar Bowl to face Oklahoma in spite of the fact the Hurricanes finished No. 2 in both the AP and Coaches polls. The outcry from South Florida was louder than the parties on Bourbon Street.

Critics squawked and the commissioners responded. Out went the time honored Dunkel Index and the New York Times rankings. In came a new diminished margin of victory and something new called "quality wins."

	Despite the results, Nebraska was still the right choice to play Miami.

But peace did not reign in the valley of college football. The 2001 season brought more controversy. The new quality win component created to solve the problem of head-to-head matchups only served to complicate the rankings by pulling a two-loss Colorado team into the national championship picture ahead of a well deserving one-loss Oregon squad. To top it off, Nebraska, who lost its last regular season game to Colorado 62-36, finished ahead of both Oregon and Colorado in the final BCS poll.

Suddenly, a mob-like mentality took over. College football had been robbed! Now the cries being heard were "Nebraska lost by 26 points, margin of victory should count for something!" (Forget about the same people begging for sportsmanship and getting rid of margin of victory the year before). "The 'Huskers didn't even win their conference, so give Colorado bonus points. And by the way, get rid of those damned computers!"

Whoa, wait a minute folks. Enough is enough. Get rid of the computers? C'mon. The computer component is the only sane thing about the current BCS formula. Sure the AP and Coaches polls have been around forever, and the weight they carry in public perception is huge, but does that mean they are always right? NO. If the final BCS poll does not agree with the final regular season AP/Coaches polls, does that mean the BCS is flawed? Absolutely not.

How quickly we forget. How quickly we lose sight of the fact that the BCS formula was born from the undisputed fact that the "human elements" in the AP/Coaches polls were open to blatant bias. How quickly we forget that many times in the last 50 years the Coaches and Sportswriters didn't even agree on who the top two teams in the nation were at the end of the regular season. How quickly we forget that the BCS formula was a breakthrough, the first scientific, unbiased approach at crowning a national championship in the 132 year history of college football.

Change is always difficult, but please, a little patience is needed with this transition. I don't expect the fans and the media to agree with the BCS 100 percent of the time, but the Bowl Championship Series brought college football out of the dark ages and into the 21st Century. In its short four-year history both BCS commissioners, Roy Kramer, and John Swofford, have reiterated the need for patience as the formula evolves into a more perfect form. Is the current formula perfect? No, far from it. But it is leap years ahead of what we have had.

I grow weary of uninformed fans and ego pumped media representatives, both of whom constantly cry over a lack of a playoff, belittle the BCS. The vocal minority has been given more attention than the great silent majority who appreciate the direction the BCS has taken college football. Get over it.

I know the silent majority exists. Towards the end of the season I announced on a national radio show that my e-mail usually runs 10-1 against the BCS. Within hours I was flooded with e-mails, about 15-1 in favor of the BCS. I know the support is there, albeit a quite one. And by the way, the BCS is not stopping a college football playoff. Contact your local university president and ask why they don't get behind legislation in the NCAA to support a playoff plan. That is the ONLY way a playoff will ever come about.

In the meantime, what can be done to cage the Boo Birds and keep things in perspective? First of all, my hope is that the BCS Commissioners will keep a cool head and not OVERREACT to an outraged but uninformed public. Secondly the BCS needs to do a better job of making the public aware of the benefits of using mathematical formulas for ranking football teams.

Few people know the rich history and tradition in this field. Few people know that the first math poll, created by University of Illinois economics professor Frank Dickinson, was published in 1926, a full 10 years before the first AP poll. Few people know that in the early 1900s mathematical systems were considered the "preferred" method of determining a national champion.

The evolution and rich histories of mathematical formulas are actually greater than that of the AP, and far greater than the Coaches poll. In fact, of the 117 current Division I-A coaches, only Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, and Lou Holtz have been coaching longer than myself, Herman Matthews, and David Rothman have been ranking teams. I doubt if more than a handful of sportswriters were on their current jobs in the '60s when Herman, David, and I started, or in the '70s, for that matter, when Jeff Sagarin began his rankings.

In essence, the overall BCS formula worked just as well in the last two seasons as it did in the first two. Yes, the formula changed slightly, but the rules were in place before each season started. All teams knew the rules, played by the same rules and knew they all had an unbiased, equal opportunity to play in the national championship game.

The goal of the BCS has never changed -- match the two best teams in the nation. Who are the two best teams? Those who have the least number of defeats while playing the hardest schedules. I submit to you that the BCS has succeeded in all four attempts. Tennessee/Florida State in 1998, Florida State/Virginia Tech in 1999, Oklahoma/Florida State in 2000, and Miami/Nebraska in 2001 were all correct choices.

In our most recent controversy between Nebraska, Oregon and Colorado, the Cornhuskers and Ducks had one loss, Colorado had two (exit Colorado). Add in Nebraska had a slightly stronger strength of schedule than Oregon (14th to 31st) and that was the final difference.

Those are the rules and they are the same for everyone. Is there anything wrong with living by the rules? Just because the AP and Coaches happened to get lucky and name the same No. 2 team doesn't mean they are correct in their choice. Those of you who have followed the "human" polls over the years know that the only reason Oregon finished No. 2 was because the Ducks lost earlier in the season than Nebraska. Forget that Nebraska lost to a higher ranked team on the road (No. 3 Colorado vs No. 9 Stanford). Traditionally teams only move up in the human polls when someone above them loses. The cardinal sin in those polls is to lose late. If Nebraska had lost to Colorado in October, the 'Huskers would have finished No. 2 in the AP and Coaches polls and all of this would have been a moot point. The BCS would have been hailed a hit again.

Now, if you don't like the rules, change the rules. This year the commissioners will reevaluate the formula just as they always do in the offseason. Should the rules be changed? Perhaps, but not radically by taking the computers out. To do so would be a step backwards and go against the grain of everything the BCS stands for. There are other issues, and some other proposed changes that have surfaced in the last few days since the commissioners spoke at the annual NCAA convention in Indianapolis.

Some talk surrounds adding a new component to give bonus points for conference champions. Do I agree? No. National championships should be based on conference games AND non-conference games. If a team wins a conference title with three, four or more losses on the season, should that team be rewarded in a national championship race after barely winning over 50 percent of their games? No. Should the quality win component be yanked after one season? No. I realize it almost created a disaster by giving a two-loss team a Rose Bowl berth, but overall it is a needed addition to a strength of schedule formula that I believe could use some changes.

Currently the SOS for the BCS is based on wins and losses, and quite frankly, a team's record is not always indicative of their strength. For example, if we look at the team records of South Carolina (7-2), Middle Tennessee (7-2), Notre Dame (3-5) and Louisiana-Lafayette (3-5) in early November, the BCS gave a team the same credit for playing South Carolina as they did Middle Tennessee, and gave the same credit for playing Notre Dame as Louisiana-Lafayette (in Part A of the two-part SOS calculations).

Yet, the Gamecocks were in everyone's Top 25 and the Blue Raiders were hovering around No. 70. The Irish were consistently ranked in the computers around No. 50 and the Rajun' Cajun's were near the bottom of Division I-A. This is a glaring concern that needs to be addressed. The quality win points are actually based on a team's rank, which is more indicative of strength, as a result the bonus points balanced out some of the inconsistency in the strength of schedule. Therefore, I think the quality wins should remain in the formula.

I would, however, like to see the rule changed which prohibits a team from receiving bonus points by defeating the same team twice. After observing the rule for one season I think it is obvious that if a team is beaten by the same team twice it will most likely drop the losing team so far in the BCS rankings that very little bonus points would be awarded to the winning team, even if the points are doubled. Any time a team in contention for the national championship puts their high ranking on the line, they deserve extra points for beating a quality opponent.

As I have written many times before, I think the BCS is good for college football. Where its evolution will take us I don't know. Is the BCS a prelude to a playoff? Is the BCS the answer to college football's financial woes? I don't know, but I have faith in the conference commissioners that they will lead us in the right direction. There is more interest and excitement in college football now than I have ever witnessed before and I attribute a lot of that to the BCS.

College football as a sport is always in transition in some form or another. The Wing T, the Wishbone, and the Fun-N-Gun have all revolutionized the sport on the field in their day, just as math polls from Dickinson and Dunkel in the 1920s to Massey, Anderson/Hester, Wolfe, and Colley in the 1990s have enhanced computer rankings. We are a part of the BCS, but also a part of college football history and I'm very proud of that.

BCS pollster Richard Billingsley is a college football historian, and author. His complete rankings are available at www.CFRC.com.