It's late December and they tell us it's the most wonderful time of the year. But not on the college football gridiron. Get prepared for another two-week binge of lackluster matchups, rife with players you never have heard of and teams you have never seen on national television.

It all kicks off tonight with the New Orleans Bowl, which has relocated to Lafayette, La. after Hurricane Katrina caused significant damage to the Superdome, the previous site of the game. Two 6-5 teams, Arkansas State and Southern Mississippi, will play in a stadium a Sun Belt school calls home. Nothing grabs ratings like two mediocre squads battling it out in a facility half the size of a Southeastern Conference stadium. But ESPN will carry the game, even though it would never sign on to televise a nonconference matchup between these two schools.

Courtesy Honolulu Advertiser

And that is the problem college football during bowl week. Games that would never attract any interest during the season are featured as must-see television in late December.  In reality, however, nobody outside of the participating schools' fan bases wants to see North Carolina State face off against South Florida or Colorado State play Navy. There are so may bad matchups that only the most die-hard fan could tell you which team is playing in which bowl, if they actually had heard of the bowl in the first place.  

After all, the names, locations and sponsors of these lackluster postseason affairs seem to change every year. Who knew there was a Meineke Bowl? Does the winner get a trophy molded in the shape of a muffler? If they do, will anybody be there to see the presentation?

Everyone knows that the number of postseason games in college football has proliferated because the schools want money and the smaller conferences want the exposure their big brothers are getting. But the bowl landscape has become inundated with matchups that will likely turn away fans. While it's a nice to see a team like Arkansas State make its first bowl appearance in 35 years, no one is interested enough in the Indians to really care. The only games that anybody wants to watch are the four BCS bowls. Otherwise, 'tis the season to be bored by college football.

While a majority of fans and pundits have called for the overhauling of the BCS system in the past, few have expressed outrage with the USA Today/ESPN Coaches' poll. But after the final poll of the regular season was released and the public was given the opportunity to see how each of 62 participating coaches filled out their Top 25, there should have been more pleas to reform a ranking system that is rife with voters who are careless, uninformed and biased.

 What was he thinking?

Courtesy MSNBC

Frank Solich, the head coach at Ohio, ranked LSU ten spots ahead of Georgia a day after the Bulldogs defeated the Tigers in the Southeastern Conference Championship game. What was he thinking? Arkansas coach Houston Nutt left a 10-1 West Virginia team out of the polls and included a 7-4 South Carolina squad in his Top 25 while elevating the rankings of SEC teams. Oregon coach Mike Belotti and Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, whose schools were each battling for a spot in a major bowl, ranked their teams high and one of their BCS rivals significantly lower than it should have been. Tyrone Willingham, who was ousted as Notre Dame coach last year, stuck it to the Fighting Irish by listing them ninth in his poll.

Coaches have an agenda and some of them probably don't like each other. Gamecocks coach Steve Spurrier and Tennesee field general Phillip Fulmer probably don't have tea together. They also can exercise some sweet revenge on each other when they are voting in the poll. That is why it is ridiculous that a group of men are allowed to bear influence on the status of not only their teams but also their competitors. If the poll was treated like a court case, all 62 coaches would have to recuse themselves because of their conflicts of interest.

It seems the best way to correct this problem is to transfer the voting power from the coaches to each of the Division I-A conference commissioners. Since they oversee their leagues, they would have more of an objective viewpoint of the teams both in their conferences and outside them. They also would not be involved in any personal rivalries and would have time to pay attention to the games. Coaches often ask their school's sports information director to fill out the poll because they can't follow all of the action when they are busy concentrating on Saturday's game.

But what happens come late November, when the stakes are raised and the BCS game matchups are being determined? Won't the commissioners favor the teams in their leagues so their conferences get the big payout? This problem can be solved by penalizing a commissioner who ranks a team five spots lower or higher than the cumulative poll by preventing him or her from voting in the following week's poll. In essence, stick them where it hurts, because in the dog-eat-dog world of college football that is all anybody understands anymore. And at least in this scenario Kevin Weiberg and Mike Slive, as opposed to Steve Spurrier, will be able to determine where South Carolina and Tennessee will be ranked. After all, the Ole' Ball Coach is too busy drawing up plays and getting under the skin of his team's opponent that week.