"How Michigan can overcome the BCS"

Memo to the University of Michigan athletic department:
Do you want your football team to play in the national title game? Do you want to avoid getting screwed by the BCS, particularly human voters? Do you want your football team to get what it deserves?

Well, here's an idea.

Don't end your season before Thanksgiving. Don't play Notre Dame in September. Instead, take on the Fighting Irish on the final weekend of the season. They weren't playing - what else are they going to do? Study? PUH-lease. This is the big-money business of college football.

Don't start your schedule in the first week of September. Games in September mean about as much as a broken hairdryer does to a teenage girl.

No one cares that Michigan beat Notre Dame on Sept. 16. Likewise, no one gives a hoot that the Wolverines took down Wisconsin, now the No. 7 team in the BCS, the following week. All that is in the past.

All that mattered to those men who vote in the Coaches' Poll was that Florida beat Arkansas in the SEC title game and, of course, that Michigan "had their shot."

But would people have been saying this had the Wolverines played this weekend, maybe defeated the Fighting Irish? No way.

Who cares about tradition? Who cares about playing Ohio State in the last game of the season? Michigan needs to extend its schedule - period.

How about this: Michigan plays Hawaii on Thanksgiving weekend - like Purdue did this year - and then the Fighting Irish on the final weekend. I think that'd be enough to get the Wolverines into the title game. Skip the first week of the season, start their schedule on the second weekend and take a bye sometime in October (like Florida did this season - their bye came after their lone loss to Auburn).

And play all the way into December. I don't care if it's snowing in South Bend or Ann Arbor. That's what football's all about, right?

Michigan ended its season so long ago that I bet several of the voters forgot just how dominant the Wolverines were. For instance, voters likely looked at Michigan's 17-10 win at Penn State in October and thought, "That doesn't seem that impressive, defeating a team that finished 8-4 by just a touchdown." They would have failed to see, of course, that the Michigan defense knocked two Penn State quarterbacks out of the game and that the Nittany Lions didn't score their touchdown until 3:18 remained in the contest.

And you have to give the voters a break. That was October, after all. Several voters already have Christmas trees. The only Michigan game fresh in voters' minds is the Wolverines' lone loss - 42-39 at Ohio State on Nov. 18 (and maybe their 34-26 so-unimpressive win over Ball State on Nov. 4, although, of course, they don't remember that after taking a 31-12 lead, coach Lloyd Carr inserted second- and third-string defensive players).

The game most voters were undoubtedly thinking about Sunday when they inked their votes was Florida's 38-28 win over Arkansas because it happened a day earlier. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to know this. They saw the Gators upend the Razorbacks and thought to themselves, "Wow, this is a good football team. How can we possibly keep them out of the title game?"

Florida was the Christmas Day prime rib while Michigan was the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.

So, University of Michigan athletic department members, if you truly care about your football team, if you care about them not getting hoed by the BCS (just like the coaches did to them in 1998, giving Nebraska a share of the national title), then you need to be proactive.

Mess with tradition, change your schedule. Yes, it has come to this.