These Days It’s Hard to Find Many Fans of BCS

Pity the bowl championship series. The ridicule never ceases.

“Where is the poor BCS to find safe haven now that America doesn’t have a decent leper colony left?” asked Greg Cote of the Miami Herald.

“You know those smoke-filled rooms in airports where ostracized nicotine addicts retreat to satisfy their socially repugnant habit? The BCS isn’t even welcome there.

“I expect Osama bin Laden will next rise from his rat hole on a video, making clear Al Qaeda is in no way a supporter of, or affiliated with, the BCS.”

That said, Cote threw his support behind the much-maligned BCS system, calling Tuesday’s USC-Oklahoma pairing at the Orange Bowl “a legitimate national-championship game.”

Auburn, also unbeaten, would no doubt argue the point.

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Trivia time: Once a tennis power, Australia has only one man ranked in the world’s top 100. Who is he?

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Heavy metal fan: Looking back at some of the more peculiar soccer happenings of the last year, Mike Woitalla of Soccer America magazine stumbled across the sad tale of Shukri Aroshidze.

Aroshidze got his 15 minutes of fame by stealing a 150-pound bronze soccer ball.

According to police in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, he pried it off the tomb of Mikhail Meskhi, one of the country’s most popular players and a member of the USSR’s 1962 World Cup team.

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Digging in: Surely no one could have been surprised when Texas El Paso was beaten by Colorado in the Houston Bowl on Wednesday. The Miners have lost their season finale for 18 consecutive years.

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The envelope, please: The Guardian newspaper in England selected Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers as its “overseas sports personality of the year.”

Artest, it said, “instigated the best player-supporter brawl scenario” since Manchester United’s Eric Cantona launched a Kung Fu-style kick at a heckling fan in 1995.

The brawl, the newspaper continued, “represented the most viscerally thrilling 60 seconds in NBA history. OK, the only viscerally thrilling 60 seconds in NBA history.”

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Just the ticket: Mike Fleeman of West Los Angeles thought he had hit the jackpot when his brother-in-law, who lives in Pasadena, won a lottery for the right to purchase Rose Bowl tickets. Fleeman and his wife, Barbara, are Cal graduates, his sister and brother-in-law USC alumni.

The four figured the $500 for tickets was well spent. Surely one of their schools would be in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.

Then the BCS stepped in, and the Trojans ended up going to the Orange Bowl while the Golden Bears were banished to the Holiday Bowl.

“Being a Cal fan now is like being a Red Sox fan until a few months ago,” Fleeman said. “You just feel cursed.”

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Trivia answer: Lleyton Hewitt.

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And finally: Australian golfer Stuart Appleby has his own idea of why American golfers often fare poorly abroad.

“They’re like a bag of prawns on a hot Sunday,” he said. “They don’t travel well.”