Is a 'kiss-and-cry' area the next BCS tweak?

By JIM LITKE-AP Sports Writer Reason No. 1,003 to drive the BCS blazers out of business: They're turning college football into figure skating. It's bad enough now that teams

Monday, December 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

By JIM LITKE-AP Sports Writer

Reason No. 1,003 to drive the BCS blazers out of business: They're turning college football into figure skating.

It's bad enough now that teams have to pile up style points, lobby shamelessly for rankings and wait until they step off the playing surface to get some idea what a performance is worth. But wait. Given the BCS' uncontrollable desire to ``tweak'' the format, next year's innovation will be a ``kiss-and-cry'' area for coaches who get jobbed.

Had one been in place Sunday, Butch Davis of Miami and Frank Beamer of Virginia Tech would have been front and center.

Davis' team beat Florida State in October and plays just as tough a schedule, but somehow it finished 0.32 points behind the No. 2-rated Seminoles in the final BCS rankings. That cost the Hurricanes a place in the Orange Bowl against unbeaten Oklahoma and a shot at an undisputed national championship. Instead, they'll go to the Sugar Bowl, hoping to beat Florida and claim a half-share of the title.

``The University of Miami is thrilled to death,'' Davis said, ``with the opportunity to be there.''

Sure.

Beamer's team actually finished ahead of both Oregon State and Notre Dame in the same BCS rankings, but those two meet in the Fiesta Bowl, anyway. A trip to the Gator Bowl means $2 million less for the Hokies and Beamer loses $100,000 in bonus money, but he, too, apparently was thrilled to be going where he was going.

``We're real excited about our opportunity to go to the Gator Bowl and play a really good Clemson football team,'' Beamer said.

Both coaches held their tongues because, just like in figure skating, the more you complain the system is unfair, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The people in charge see to it. That made Florida coach Steve Spurrier seem downright reckless.

``We were fortunate that the BCS wasn't in place the year we won the national championship,'' he said Sunday.

That was 1997, when then-No. 3 Florida beat No. 1 Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. Had the BCS been running things, it would have sent No. 2 Arizona State to New Orleans in place of the Gators. Spurrier knows a better way to settle things.

``I've always said we should have a playoff with 16, or at least eight teams, and play it down until there's one winner,'' he said.

Three years of ``tweaking'' by the BCS blazers and they still can't get it right.

Two Decembers ago, Kansas State lost to Texas A&M in double-overtime in the last game of the regular season and went into the BCS version of free-fall. Though the Wildcats finished ranked No. 3 by the BCS, the back-room politicos considered them a poor drawing card. K-State went from playing Tennessee for the national championship to playing Purdue in the Alamo Bowl.

When K-State president Jon Wefald asked why, then-BCS coordinator Roy Kramer had an answer at the ready. While promising some more ``tweaking,'' Kramer said, ``We want to create a 1 vs. 2. The other matchups are up to the individual bowls.''

Current BCS boss John Swofford can dust the quote off and ship it to Beamer. Coming up with an answer for Davis proved a little tougher.

Though the Hurricanes were ranked No. 3 by the BCS, both the AP media poll and the coaches' poll have Oklahoma, Miami and Florida State ranked 1-2-3. The computers flip-flopped Miami and Florida State, giving rise to suspicions the people who feed them know too little about football to weigh factors such as strength of schedule and margin of victory accordingly.

``The computers are as objective as you can get as far as putting information in and determining what comes out,'' Swofford said. ``They shouldn't have a bias.''

Maybe not, but the Dallas Morning News turned up the single most-galling example of what Florida State coach Bobby Bowden loves to call ``fuzzy math.''

It was Miami's 42-31 win over Louisiana Tech. The Hurricanes won the game, but failed to pick up enough style points. Failing to run up the score against a team that lost to Penn State by 60 points put Miami far enough in arrears to Florida State that it never recovered. Last weekend, while the Seminoles were idle, Miami beat Boston College by 46 points and actually lost ground in that chase.

On Sunday, Swofford conceded BCS officials may ``tweak'' the system one more time to prevent teams from reaping rewards by running up scores.

``I don't think that it plays as big a role as some people tend to believe that it does,'' he said. ``But if it plays a role at all, it's something that I do think we need to look at.''

Just what the game needs.

More tweaking.