The fairest way to determine a champion may cost the Pacific 10 Conference a chance of earning an additional $4.5 million by getting a second team into a Bowl Championship Series game.
When the NCAA approved a 12th game for college teams a few years ago, Pac-10 athletic directors used the opportunity, in 2006, to go to a nine-game format in which all schools play one another every season.
An option would have been to use the extra game to schedule a weaker nonconference opponent.
In a year when the conference has been brutally competitive, the extra league losses could have postseason consequences.
"When you're playing an extra conference game, just do the math -- half the teams are going to have another loss," Arizona Coach Mike Stoops said during Tuesday's Pac-10 coaches' conference call.
Last weekend, the Southeastern Conference used the "extra" game to schedule a slate of easy November victories against the likes of Northern Arizona, Tennessee Tech, Memphis and Eastern Kentucky.
Meanwhile, back in the meat grinder, USC Coach Pete Carroll said this is the toughest he has seen the Pac-10 since he joined the conference in 2001.
"There's no room for error," Carroll said. "The margins have really narrowed."
It is a rite of fall for coaches to talk up their conferences, but this year the Pac-10 has numbers to back it up.
The league is ranked No. 1 in four of the six BCS computer indexes and third, behind the SEC and Big East, in the other two.
Six Pac-10 schools rank in the top 33 of this week's Harris poll, yet no conference school has fewer than two losses, while USC, at No. 11, is the highest-ranked team in the Associated Press media poll.
When you add that to the league's ambitious nonconference philosophy, it makes stockpiling victories difficult.
Consider: The Pac-10 is 20-9 in nonconference games this year, scoring key wins against Ohio State, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Kansas State and Minnesota. Four of the Pac-10's nine losses came against schools -- Cincinnati, Boise State, Iowa, Louisiana State -- currently ranked in the BCS top 10, with a combined record of 34-3.
Being good, and fair, could be costly if Oregon won the Rose Bowl berth and USC finished second at 10-2.
The Trojans' losses were both in conference, and they have league games remaining against Stanford, UCLA and Arizona. One more Pac-10 loss and the Trojans are probably out of the BCS mix.
