With the NCAA college football bowl schedule set, the Bowl Championship Series is once again under fire. This is the seventh season since the BCS’ conception and, despite constant tweaking and tuning, things have still gone awry in the college football world, this time because three BCS conference teams are undefeated.

Putting that controversy aside there are some positives, but the negatives quickly outweigh them. So before we get to the gripes, here are a few good things that happened this year.

The national championship will feature two undefeated teams, unlike last year. Maybe it took five teams to post perfect records on the season to assure this feat, but hey, at least they got something right.

The second positive is that Utah became the first mid-major team to play in a BCS bowl. This fact seems to be lost in the controversy of the national championship after several seasons where mid-majors threatened to break into the BCS mix but came up short. It finally happened.

There will also be several good non-BCS bowl games to watch. While Iowa/ LSU, Florida State/West Virginia and Georgia/ Wisconsin will highlight a strong New Year’s Day schedule, the real fireworks will come on New Year’s Eve. Louisville (9-1) will square off against Boise State (11-0) on December 31 in what could be the most exciting game of the bowl season. The Cardinals (49.8 points per game) and Broncos (49.8 ppg) boast the two best offenses in college football; and this should be a shoot out in the Liberty Bowl. This game could be dubbed the “mid-major national championship” because it features two of the top three teams in class but not the best team. Wasn’t that last year’s BCS definition for national championship?

And now to the complaints about the bowl lineup. While No. 6 Utah (11-0) may have joined the BCS party, they’re playing No. 21 Pittsburgh (8-3), ranked nine spots lower than the next BCS team, No. 12 Virginia Tech. Not to knock Pitt but they won a conference, the Big East, that’s not worthy of its title. How can you give an automatic BCS berth to a conference that had only two teams ranked, the other was No. 25 Boston College. The Big East is in a transition year so you can’t blame them too much but how ’bout giving the automatic berth to a mid-major instead as an experiment. Giving the best mid-major in the country a BCS bid seems to make sense to me but the BCS would never go for it. At any rate Utah should get a chance to play the top competition the major conferences have to offer.

The second complaint is that California (10-1) isn’t in a BCS bowl. How can a team that lost its only game to the top-ranked school in the country in a game that they hung with USC ’til the end and not be in a major bowl? Not even a New Year’s Day bowl. Cal will play Texas Tech (7-4) in the Holiday Bowl. For the No. 4 Golden Bears, the only bigger slap in the face than being snubbed by the BCS is being matched up with the No. 23 Red Raiders.

No matter what problems there are in college football I’m just happy that in another two weeks I can hibernate for the winter, coming out of sleep only to watch the greatest week and a half on my sports calendar.