Mike Celizic

Regular visitors to this space know that I have less use for the BCS than King Tut has for sleeping pills. If you gave me a choice between getting rid of the BCS or world peace with universal health care, unlimited free energy and dues-free memberships at Pine Valley, Augusta National and Pebble Beach with a Porsche Turbo-Carrera GT thrown in, I’d have to ask if I could sleep on it.

But I’ve finally come to see a most excellent place for the BCS. The NFL.

Have you looked at the standings recently? (If you’ve just eaten, don’t look now unless you want to lose your lunch.) Almost every one of the eight divisions looks like the National League West, with a few opting out for the NL Central paradigm — no team over .500 need apply.

You’ve got five teams that seem capable of distinguishing the difference between a gameplan and a grocery list — the Packers, Cowboys and Giants in the NFC and the Patriots and Colts in the AFC. You’ve got a couple who are scratching at the door begging to be let in, but that group includes the Lions, and they’ve got a lot to prove before we’ll take them seriously. It also includes the Titans, who would be a serious threat if they weren’t playing in the AFC, where nobody’s beating Indy and New England.

If the NFL had a weekly poll as college football does, you couldn’t even fill out a Top 25. And you’d be done with the Top 10 after listing seven teams.

I’m sure there’s been a worse season than this, but it’s hard to remember one. We’ve got a handful of teams that have dared to be competent and a whole lot of teams that can’t decide whether to make the effort to pull themselves out of the muck of mediocrity in which they are mired or to just bag it all.

If ever there was a year in which an 8-8 or even a 7-9 team makes the playoffs, this is it. And let’s face it, none of them are going to have any more chance of winning than Britney Spears has of not going clubbing.

So let’s forget the playoffs this year. Let the best of the bumblers play a series of exhibitions for three weeks, take a week off, and then play the NFL BCS championship game.

We already know who’s going to represent the AFC — the Patriots. The Colts had their chance at home with Dolby Surround Sound and couldn’t get it done.

So even if the Pats take a week off and get beaten by someone, they’ve got the head-to-head edge and they’re in the title game.

The NFC’s a bit dicier. If we voted today, I think we’d have to go with the Pack, if only because there’s nothing better than seeing Brett Favre running out of the tunnel in Phoenix to air it out in one more Super Bowl.

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Cowboy fans wouldn’t like it, but does anyone else care? But lest they think I’m dumping on them, the Cowboys have their fate in their hands, as do the Packers, because on Nov. 29 they meet in Dallas. The winner takes over the top slot in the NFC polls, and the loser gets to play the Colts in the Consolation Bowl.

(Quick aside to that game: Unless you have the NFL Network or spend the holiday in a bar, you won’t be able to watch that game.)

And event that could change because of the Lions and Giants. The Giants could beat the Cowboys and tie for the division lead, and the Packers could beat the Cowboys but still lose to the Lions. Meanwhile the Giants, who have already lost to the Packers, have to play the Lions, so things could get confusing by the end of the season.

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But that’s what polls and computers are for — to sort those sorts of things out. And when you come right down to it, if we were doing this strictly by BCS rules, if all of those teams end the year with two losses, they’re not going to the Super Bowl anyway, the Colts are.

That really would be best. Indianapolis played the Patriots close with a depleted lineup, and in a year with very few big match-ups because there are so very few big teams, that’s the game we want to see anyway. And think of the ratings.

It’s really the only way to go in this year of awful teams. Take a poll, send the winners to Phoenix, and we can start Super Bowl hype the first week of January.

So who do you like for the Heisman? Has to be Tom Brady, no?

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