My partner never looks at sports news, but even he was puzzled by the Bowl Championship Series pairings.

"Where's TCU?" he asked. "And why are they in the Rose Bowl?"

He grew up in Ohio, so in his mind, Ohio State plays in the Rose Bowl every year —usually against Southern California. It's just not right to mess with such tradition.

But that's exactly what the BCS has done. The granddaddy of all bowl games could have maintained its traditional Big Ten vs. Pac Ten rivalry, with two stellar 11-1 teams, Wisconsin and Stanford, facing off in Pasadena, Calif. Instead, Wisconsin will go up against Texas Christian University on New Year's Day.

Sure, the undefeated Horned Frogs are a good team, but does anyone outside of Fort Worth care about a Rose Bowl they're in?

The BCS was created to come up with a semblance of a national champion without instituting a playoff system— and they've lucked out this year with what promises to be a humdinger of a game in Auburn vs. Oregon.

But the system is so messed up that just about every other bowl game is meaningless. If there were a playoff system, the next six weeks would build to a climax as top teams square off each week before frenzied crowds for the right to make it to the national title game. Throughout the month of December, much of the focus of the sports world would be on college football.

Instead college football fans will have to suffer through games between teams with mediocre records — 12 of the 70 bowl teams have 6-6 records— in half-filled stadiums. I can't imagine anyone being thrilled over the Fiesta Bowl matchup — a 8-4 Connecticut team vs. Oklahoma — unless it's Connecticut fans who will escape frigid winter weather for a few days.

By scheduling such meaningless games throughout the month of December into January, college football effectively cedes the spotlight to the National Football League.

College presidents say they're against a playoff system because they don't want to mess with bowl traditions and they don't want to take athletes out of the classroom. Yet they're stretching the BCS title game until Jan. 10 (when Auburn meets Oregon in Glendale, Ariz.). In the old days, all the important games were played on New Year's Day. Now there are seven bowl games in the week after Jan. 1, including the GoDaddy.com Bowl in Mobile, Ala., and the Fight Hunger Bowl in San Francisco. Sounds more like the Fight Boredom Bowl to me. And I bet boredom wins.

If past BCS championship games are any indication, both Oregon and Auburn will look out of sync during the first quarter because they won't have played a game in more than six weeks.

Even though a playoff system would be so much more exciting, don't expect the BCS system to fall out of favor anytime soon. It will remain in place because a few top conferences make millions off several games that nobody cares about — and one game that matters.

Here's one idea to make the traditional bowl games a little more interesting. Quit giving automatic slots to mediocre conferences and pit teams in the BCS top 10 against each other, using traditional rivalries where applicable.

This would be my pairings under the system:

Rose Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Stanford

Fiesta Bowl: TCU vs. Oklahoma

Sugar Bowl: Ohio State vs. Arkansas

Orange Bowl: Michigan State vs. LSU

At least, a few of these games would be worth watching.