For almost its entire existence, the Bowl Championship Series has been like that kid in your class who should have flunked out so many times, but always got some stroke of luck, like a snowstorm on a test day, that allowed him to just get by.

Every year since its inception in 1998, the BCS crowned the only unbeaten team in a major conference as the undisputed national champion, despite seasons when it seemed very possible for at least three teams to be undefeated by bowl season.

But that cheat sheet of a team called Oklahoma that looked like a sure thing to help the BCS pass again didn't have the right answers for Kansas State or Louisiana State, so the BCS has to come home with its version of a big red "F" -- a split national championship.

The Gateway Corporation has come along to bail out college football, and, of course, to make some profit for itself by offering $30 million in scholarships to the two teams in order to stage a title game between Southern California and LSU. However, it doesn't look like the NCAA is biting -- and it shouldn't -- but for reasons different than the ones it would cite, for example, that such a system would undermine the current one. The split national title is a failure college football needs to punish itself for and needs to make major changes because of.

As long as there is a BCS, it is going to be flawed. You can't decide a champion in any league -- especially in a league with 117 teams and just 12 or 13 regular season games -- with one game at the end of the season. When you have three teams from major conferences with the same record like the BCS had this season, there is no way to say which two get to play for the title and which one doesn't. Neither computers, nor coaches, nor writers are truly up to the task. You need games on the field to figure this out.

College football needs to accept this fact, and it might take an entire year of dealing with its split national championship to do so. It needs to understand that its system has done exactly what it was created not to do. This kid needs to be sent to his room to think about what he did, and shouldn't be allowed out until he's capable of making serious changes.

An extra game after the traditional bowls would really only serve as a quick fix for the mess the BCS created this season. It's a half-measure designed to fix the problem at hand but would not eliminate the possibility of continuing problems in the future. It would set a precedent, and not one that would be best for college football to continue.

There have been plenty of past seasons when an extra game would have made no sense. Last season, if there had been a game after the bowls to determine the champion, Ohio State and Miami would have had to go at it again. Not that it wouldn't have been a great game, but what happens if Miami wins that one? Best two-out-of-three? If not, what purpose would the win in that glorious game have served for Ohio State?

And it's not like you can decide whether to play the game after the bowls, either. In every sport but college football, teams know exactly what they have to do to win a championship. Even with the system now, college football teams at least have a general idea and know how many games they have to play. Imagine if they told Oklahoma in 2000 or Miami in 2001 that they might have won the national championship after their respective bowl games, but told them the next day they'd have to play someone else.

Even if it wasn't just bad policy, it's still asking a lot of the employees of the NCAA, the BCS, the bowls, or whomever else would run this extra game to prepare for a matchup that might not happen. Bowl games create jobs for people and revenue for the towns the games are held in. Imagine if those people spent a whole year preparing to find out that there wasn't a game, or found out after the bowl games that they had a week to throw one together.

It's time for a playoff, and this season's split championship should finally prove that there's no more getting around that. Every assurance that college football could want has already been given to it. The kids won't miss class because all of the games can be played over the semester break. The major bowls can be used in the playoffs, and they could still use the BCS rankings to determine what teams get in. If the playoffs are kept small enough, the regular season won't lose much meaning, either.

So, Gateway, don't get too upset if the NCAA doesn't come out and play. Like the kid that finally brought home the "F," it has to take some time to think about its future.