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Without looking at the BCS rankings or the Associated Press poll or the coaches choices, who do you think should be ranked at the top of major college football?

My choice is Missouri after the Tigers’ convincing victory over previously-undefeated Kansas last Saturday night in Kansas City. Missouri looked awesome in winning the Big 12 Northern Division title, and now they will take on Oklahoma for the whole conference crown.

That should be a great championship contest. If Missouri prevails, the Tigers probably deserve to be the top-ranked team in the land and should get a berth in the BCS national title game. Still, should Missouri qualify, what team has earned the right to face the Tigers in that BCS contrived championship game? That’s right, no one appears as the logical opponent in what is designed to be a national championship showdown.

There is simply no question: the BCS is a mess, and there will be no consensus when it comes to a major college football champion. There is a number of teams with just one loss and therefore a legitimate argument for a chance to play in a championship game.

Do we really need another reason to put a true playoff system into effect? The wonderful game of college football is in dire need of a simple playoff format that would end the annual debate and allow us to have a real national champion when the season ends.

Right now, there is just one unbeaten major college football team, and that honor goes to the Hawaii Rainbow-Warriors, the champions of the Western Athletic Conference. Hawaii earned the WAC title last week with a convincing win over once-beaten Boise State, the team that surprised Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl last time around.

Hawaii is an interesting team, utilizing Coach June Jones’ innovative “run-and-shoot” offense to score almost at will. Certainly, Hawaii hasn’t played as tough a schedule as the other highly-ranked college teams, but they have beaten everyone they have faced. How can you improve on that?

Hawaii has one more regular season game late this week when the Washington Huskies go to Oahu. If Hawaii can win that one and finish the regular season unbeaten, they will certainly deserve a major BCS bowl game. Remember how difficult it was for an unbeaten Utah team to get a big bowl opportunity a couple of years ago? And you will recall that the Utes rolled over Pittsburgh in the Fiesta Bowl.

Now it is Hawaii’s turn to get a chance in a big-money BCS bowl game, although the powers in big-time college football seem reluctant to include the upstart WAC champion. I am hoping that Hawaii can finish unbeaten and then get the well-earned bowl opportunity.

It would be fun to see how one of the perennial gridiron powers would attempt to cope with that “run-and-shoot” scheme.

Our Wyoming Cowboys limped to the end of the football season with five wins and seven losses following last week’?s loss to Colorado State. The long-anticipated departure of UW offensive coordinator, Bill Cockhill, was announced in short order.

Cockhill has been under fire for most of the fall as the Pokes offensive production continued to fizzle. The “no-huddle, hurry-up-and-wait” scheme that Wyoming used this fall never captured the imagination of Cowboy fans. Maybe if the scheme had produced better results, it would have been acceptable, but that wasn’t the case.

The whole concept just seemed indecisive and slow as the Wyoming quarterback would stand and delay waiting for a signal from the sidelines as to what play to put into play. Head coach Joe Glenn has promised a national search for a new coordinator, but he says he wants to replace Cockhill with someone he is familiar with.

That might narrow the field somewhat, but we can hope that Glenn has an imaginative offensive coach in mind who can get the Cowboys rolling again. Glenn has been remarkably loyal to the men on his coaching staff and for him to jettison Cockhill is an indication that after five years as the Pokes head man, Glenn is well aware that a change badly was needed.

It won’t be difficult to forget the disappointment of the season just past, but the UW football program has some work to do to get Cowboy fans excited again about future seasons.

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