For proof that common sense isn’t required to reach the top of the academic food chain, look no further than college football’s most spectacular failure: the Bowl Championship Series. BCS could just as well stand for Befuddling Challenge to Sanity.

Launched in 1997 by the presidents of this nation’s leading universities, and defended by them ever since, the BCS is a Frankenstein melding of man and computer. It combines the votes of sports writers and coaches with indecipherable computer formulas on things like quality of opponents and margin of victory, the goal being to match the top two teams in an undisputed championship game.

It rarely achieves that, but it does encourage coaches to cast sportsmanship aside by running up the score against overmatched foes. California coach Jeff Tedford refused to do that against Southern Mississippi last week, perhaps costing his team its rightful place in the Rose Bowl. Nice reward for doing the right thing.

Last year, human voters declared USC the top team in the land before the bowl games. The final computer printout, however, put Louisiana State and Oklahoma in the title game, leaving a split championship – precisely what the BCS was supposed to eliminate. This year, unbeaten USC and Oklahoma will meet in the Orange Bowl for the “national championship,” but will that settle things? Auburn, Utah and Boise State also are unbeaten. Why shouldn’t they have a crack at the title?

They should. A playoff system, just like every other college sport has – including lower-division football – would produce what everyone wants: an undisputed national champion.

University presidents stubbornly resist. Their reasoning is about as strong as this year’s Husky offense.

They argue that a playoff would take student athletes away from their studies for too long. Please. Are academics less important for students at smaller colleges, where football playoffs have thrived for years? And what about athletes in other sports, where playoffs last for weeks?

They also apparently fear weakening the current bowl structure and jeopardizing the huge payouts its offers. But most bowl games would be unaffected by a playoff, and the top bowls would become much more meaningful (and profitable) if they hosted pivotal playoff games rather than feel-good exhibitions.

Well-heeled boosters should demand that this mess be cleaned up. Advertisers, who figure to gain from the viewership a playoff would bring, should clamor for it.

And university presidents should try harder to recognize common sense when it’s put in front of them.