"I think it stinks. I don't think it's the way it should be."

— USC football coach Pete Carroll on the Bowl Championship System.

Pete Carroll is right, of course. The current Bowl Championship Series is not aromatic and is a bad way to go about picking a national champion.

And not just because his Trojans, currently 8-1, sixth in the BCS standings, have the best defense in the land and could get left out of the game that determines the national champion.

Unless Alabama and Texas Tech are in the title game as the only two unbeatens, there are several schools that could be in the same boat as the Trojans. All claimants able to allege unfair treatment.

But it is also hard to muster a tear for the Trojans this year. Just as it was difficult to work up sympathy for Georgia last year. Or, Florida before that because these are the schools, through their conferences, that drew up the BCS blueprint in the first place. This is what they gave us.

It was not something imposed by draconian forces out of NCAA headquarters or drawn up by committee in Congress.

The Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A) chose to go this route. Well, the six so-called power conferences did. The Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Southeastern and Trojans' own Pac-10 were the signatories to the whole kit and caboodle. They, in league with their bowls, are the reason there is no championship playoff now and won't be one for the foreseeable future.

On one hand they want to crown a national championship. On the other, they want the money. The lion's share of it. So, you know which hand won.

They drew the whole BCS scheme up as a way to make sure that, unlike the NCAA basketball tournament, the money went directly into their pockets with hardly a shekel hitting the floor.

Only when the have-nots like the WAC and others began talking to their congressmen and senators and throwing around words like "anti-trust" and "monopoly" did the big boys deign to dish out some table scraps. Hush money, really. That's how UH was able to crack the BCS last year.

The BCS divides up about $100 million per year, $82 million of it from TV rights alone. The five non-BCS signatories (WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, Sun Belt and Mid-American conferences) will split about $15 million.

Will it be a shame if the Trojans go 11-1 and aren't in the national championship game? Sure.

But save your tears for one or more of the poor — Utah, Boise State or Ball State — that could finish 12-0 and not play in any of the five BCS games. Especially if a Big East or ACC champion below them in the polls hits the BCS megabucks.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.