Hawaii got more publicity all year than it ever deserved. Most of this came of course because of Colt Brennan, their star QB, who put up epic numbers. Unfortunately, in the process of becoming undefeated media darlings, Brennan and the Warriors beat no one of consequence; still, they garnered enough attention to wind up 10th in the BCS when the season was over, and got a berth in the Sugar Bowl. And then what happened? Georgia, a real team from a real conference, stomped Hawaii 41-10. Cinderella never even showed up for this ball - her magic carriage broke an axle and went into the ditch, and Prince Charming ended up dancing with some other chick.

Hopefully, the BCS will learn a lesson from this - no more plucky smaller-conference teams in big bowl games. Yes, I know it makes for a good story; and yes I know Boise State beat Oklahoma a couple of years ago. But bowl game viewers don't care about cute little underdog scenarios - they want good games between good teams. Selecting those teams is always going to be somewhat of a dice-roll, but you greatly increase your odds when you stay away from the WAC schools, and stick to the traditional power-conference teams. The chances of another Boise State fluke are so remote they're not even worth talking about.

This is the bowl season, not the NCAA tournament. In basketball you can have a funky system like Princeton and execute perfectly and upset some bigger squad that's not ready for you, but that will almost never happen in football, where the bigger schools are just physically too much for the smaller ones. The Boise State thing skewed everyone's perceptions; it made people believe that sort of thing had a chance of happening every year. But if you matched a WAC school up against a big-time SEC or Big 12 school every bowl season, I guarantee you, 9 times out of 10 you'd wind up with something like this year's Sugar Bowl, a painful-to-watch rout.

Of course, the BCS is based partly on polls, and teams like Hawaii that go undefeated are always going to wind up climbing fairly high, assuming they have enough national publicity. This puts the BCS in the position of having to include teams like Hawaii - but that can be easily remedied by simply disqualifying teams from lesser conferences. Yes, I know such a move would cause great consternation among fans of smaller-conference teams, not to mention the schools and conference officials themselves, but I'm sorry - I don't want to end up with anymore absurd mismatches like Hawaii vs. Georgia. We have to think big-picture here. Consider the national television audience, not to mention the credibility of the bowls themselves. Let Hawaii have a crack at the Outback Bowl - they should be satisfied with that.