Politicians and football coaches on the same page? Who’d have guessed that?

“I think [the Bowl Championship Series] stinks. I don’t think it’s the way it should be.”

So said the University of Southern California’s esteemed football coach Pete Carroll earlier this week.

The remarkable thing is that Carroll, as well as Oklahoma’s coach, Bob Stoops, have finally turned against the BCS — a system which has long helped their teams more than hurt them.

Carroll hit the proverbial nail on the head with his seeming bewilderment at how the BCS system works. Nevermind how it unfairly maligns teams that aren’t ranked to begin the season, nevermind how some games all of a sudden count for way more than they should and nevermind the way the BCS naturally protects top teams to an almost jealous extreme. At the end of the day, it’s just too complicated. Carroll’s Trojans have set near the top of BCS rankings consistently and have appeared in BCS bowls the last six years, winning five of them. If he doesn’t understand how it works, how is the average fan supposed to comprehend it?

Indeed, any official explanation of how the system actually functions reads similarly to the Income Tax Code. An excerpt:

3. The champion of Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference or the Western Athletic Conference will earn an automatic berth in a BCS bowl game if either:

A. Such team is ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS standings, or,

B. Such team is ranked in the top 16 of the final BCS standings and its ranking in the final BCS Standings is higher than that of a champion of a conference that has an annual automatic berth in one of the BCS bowls.

No more than one such team from Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference and the Western Athletic Conference shall earn an automatic berth in any year. If two or more teams from those conferences satisfy the provisions for an automatic berth, then the team with the highest finish in the final BCS Standings will receive the automatic berth, and the remaining team or teams will be in the pool of teams eligible for selection by the bowls as at-large teams.

4. Notre Dame will have an automatic berth if it is in the top eight of the final BCS Standings.

Head spinning yet?

The defection of Carroll and Stoops from the ever-thinning ranks of BCS supporters offers at least a glimmer of hope that things might, someday, change.

Even president-elect Obama has weighed in on the subject, saying “I’m fed up with these computer rankings and this and that and the other. Get eight teams — the top eight teams right at the end. You got a playoff.”

So, can we get a playoff for college football? It might take a presidential executive order to make it happen, but, to quote Barack Obama again: “Yes we can!”