What we think we know . . .

. . . a month into college football:

1. No super teams. No Texas and USC of last year, nor USC of a year previous. The BCS works--and works splendidly, give it that--only when there are two squads head-and-shoulders above the rest of the nation: USC and Texas last year, Miami and Ohio State in 2002. This year, we are headed for a train wreck in which as many as five or six teams could plausibly claim they belong in Glendale come January.

The motto of those who would tear apart the BCS, root and branch, resembles that of Marxists in the 1930s: "The worse, the better." That is, the more chaotic, the more unfair, the more biased (toward the Big Six confrences, the East Coast, Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Notre Dame), the sooner a reform (and thus a playoff) will occur. This is fantasy. It matters not that a college playoff would run to the billions in rights fees and make March Madness money look like a tip jar. The Big Six (plus, as always, Notre Dame) knows that anything resembling a playoff cedes power to the NCAA, and at all costs that must be avoided.

This, too: the one danger to the BCS comes neither from public clamour, nor from the NCAA but from Congress, whose presumptive hearings and anti-trust legislation could be the ruin of this closed shop. This spectre, by itself, was enough to prompt the four-plus-one formula, a strategy that would allow the odd Louisville or TCU a run at the big cash and placate everyone.

I'm remembering probably the best moment in the history of ESPN's "Game Day": the trek by Fowler and the guys, in 2004, to undefeated mid-major Utah. This was when the Fiesta Bowl was lusting hard after Utah, and Utah knew it; Corso and Herbstreit donned sombreros for the show's final segment, and Tostitos were frisbeed across the set. The new formulation will allow for a few more of those moments--but that's it.

2. One month in, Ohio State, USC, Michigan, Louisville, Auburn, and West Virginia have--the best way to put it?--at least not disappointed.

3. Arizona State. Next subject.

4. USC? A passably competent win in a hostile stadium that has known its share of upsets (my brother went to Arizona State, so I should know).

I’m wondering, though, if USC’s defense is that good, or if they’ve been lucky in their opponents.

One other thing:

Half the yahoos in the country (Lee Corso, take a bow) said that of course USC would lose one of its first three games: hostile Arkansas, Nebraska on the road back, Arizona . . . well, once a year, at home, in a game against a huge favorite, Arizona forces seven turnovers and scores six touchdowns on special teams and four touchdowns on tipped-pass interceptions and seventeen atrocious calls go Arizona’s way . . . and since USC was a nineteen-point favorite, it only figured, right? Right?

4. Notre Dame. Some nights you just go, “Holy crap!” I hit Buffalo Wild Wings (the sports bar that is the epicenter of the Houston sports scene)a half-hour after standing at Minute Maid Park to watch Luke Scott drill a walk-off three-run homer over the wagon gate to keep the Astros’ slim-just-left-town playoff hopes alive. USC was finishing up its efficient win over Arizona, and I was settling in to watch what apparently, for the night’s clientele, passed for the main attraction (Ultimate Fighting) when a lad in a Longhorn golf shirt said, “Switch to Notre Dame! Switch to Notre Dame!”

I asked him, “Christ, aren’t they out of it?”

He said, “They’re about to be three points out of it.”

And then the extra point was missed.

And then, the interception.

And then, THE INTERCEPTION.

Look, this game was the Ultimate Fighting Conference or whatever. In other words, it was a bar fight: nothing but offense. ND had better figure out how to stop someone; scoring 40 points a game and endeavoring to hold the opposition to 39 (or 38, or 37) won’t cut it.

College football. It's corrupt. The championship is a closed-shop. The officiating is terrible. And I love it to death.