This season’s first Bowl Champion Series rankings came out this week. And along with them came the annual controversy over these rankings that decide which teams should play in which postseason game, the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl or Fiesta Bowl.

If the season ended today, the “National Championship” game would feature Ohio State (Big Ten Champion and BCS No. 1) and South Florida (Big East Champion and BCS No. 2).

The other top teams in the BCS rankings — conference champions from the remaining four of six BCS conferences: Boston College, of the ACC, South Carolina, of the SEC, Kansas, of the Big 12, Arizona State of the Pac 10 — would play in other BCS bowls. LSU, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia would receive invitations to these games, too.

Rather than deal with the annual BCS controversy of who should play for the “National Championship”, there is a much better use of the BCS rankings: a tournament.

Division 1-FBS football needs to get rid of the series of postseason games called bowls. For years, Division 1-FBS has been the only division of college football, or of any college sport for that matter, that doesn’t use a tournament to decide who the champion is.

Through the BCS rankings, college football should properly seed the top teams in the country for a tournament.

To avoid confusion, BCS should be re-named the TCS rankings, for “Tournament Championship Series.”

The tournament would have 24 teams, eight of which would have a bye week. The champions of the six BCS conferences would receive a bye instead of a BCS game. This would leave the door open for two other at-large teams to receive a bye too.

The remaining 16 teams would start games a week before the top eight. There have been complaints that adding a tournament would make the college football season too long. Given the fact that bowl games start Dec. 20 this year, a 24-team tournament would only be two weeks longer than the current bowl season. And if the NCAA would get rid of the extra game they added to the regular season a few years ago, changing every team’s schedule back to 11 games, it would only be a week longer.

As for the other teams left out of the tournament, they would be placed in a second-tier, 24-team tournament, similar to the NIT in college basketball. Right now, 64 teams get to go to bowl games, which would mean 16 bowl-eligible teams would be left out of postseason contention. The best response to that is, does anyone really think Rice (7-5), East Carolina (7-5), or Northern Illinois (7-5) should have gone to bowl games in 2006? Their opponents reflected that they did not, outscoring the three teams 102-31.

Instead of a tournament, we are left this season with rankings that are supposed to fairly choose the best teams. While they may provide an accurate assessment of certain people and computers think who the best teams in the country are, it definitely does not pick a champion.

College basketball is a perfect example of how the top-ranked team rarely survives. In the history of college basketball only five times have two No. 1 seeds gone on to play for the championship:

-1982 North Carolina vs. Georgetown

-1993 North Carolina vs. Michigan

-1999 Duke vs. Connecticut

-2005 North Carolina vs. Illinois

-2007 Florida vs. Ohio State.

Also, only five times in the history of college basketball has a team ranked No. 1 in at least one pre-tournament poll gone on to win the tournament:

-1978 Kentucky

-1982 North Carolina

-1992 Duke

-1995 UCLA

-2001 Duke

In some years like 2006, not even one No. 1 seed went on to play for the National Championship (No. 3 seed Florida vs. No. 2 UCLA). Many KU fans may remember that Kansas was only a No. 6 seed coming into the 1988 tournament, the last time Kansas won the National Championship.

Other years like 1986, 1992, 1995, 1997, 1998, and 2002, Kansas entered the tournament as a No.1 seed and did not go on to win the National Championship.

For Kansas basketball fans, the idea of life without the basketball tournament could sound appealing. Kansas could have a few more National Championships in basketball if it had avoided teams like Bucknell, Bradley and Syracuse, bypassing the whole tournament and playing in a “National Championship” game instead.

While many will continue to debate who should play for the “National Championship” as the rest of the season unfolds and the BCS rankings change, people should realize how irrelevant the bowl system really is. Until there is a tournament, there will not be an official National Champion, only winners of exhibition matches.

-Edited by Chris Beattie