As our uncle would say, “Oh, law.”

The Bowl Championship Series, which we just defended, didn’t exactly wow the nation when it retained former Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer’s firm to run its public relations operation. The move has no doubt been driven by things like PACs popping up to push for a major college football playoff, and threats of congressional investigations. This, eh, doesn’t look good on the surface.

We never liked Fleischer. He acted like a hyped-up douchenozzle during the 2000 campaign, and when moved into the official press secretary role, had to behave like an asshole. Every White House press secretary does. We’re pretty sure it’s in the job description. That’s only the first problem.

The second problem is that Fleischer’s name is irreparably tied to the Bush administration, which in the second term so alienated the voting public that Congress flipped to the Democrats and a first-term senator with a funny name was able to take the White House. Not a good track record, there.

The laughs resounded across the college football blogosphere. As says Dr. Saturday:

It took me a couple go-rounds this weekend to realize the headline “Bowl Championship Series hires ex-Bush administration spokesman to improve public image of BCS” wasn’t another magisterial offering from The Onion — the haphazard hand of reality couldn’t possibly align such note-perfect satire on its own accord. But sometimes, I guess, you really can’t make this stuff up.

And look at that picture — he’s clearly angling to make sure Texas gets in the national championship game. Conspiracy!

U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah wasn’t happy with what happened to his beloved Utes when they went 13-0 and beat Alabama in last year’s Sugar Bowl. He thought they should have had a chance to play in the Bowl Championship Series national championship game. Instead, Florida, and the best football player of our time, Tim Tebow, raised the crystal football for the Gators second national title in three years.

So, he convened a hearing into the BCS, with the intention of prodding the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision into going to a playoff.

“The University of Utah finished the season by routing a team that had been ranked number one for much of the season,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine what more Utah could have done with its season in search of a national championship, yet under the BCS system, they were eliminated from such consideration before the season even started.”

Yes, Senator, that’s right. Utah plays in the Mountain West Conference, which isn’t known for a top-notch level of pigskin competition. Last season, the Utes ran up victories on such top-shelf squads as a 3-9 Michigan team, UNLV, Utah State, Air Force, Weber State (FCS), Oregon State, Wyoming, Colorado State, New Mexico, TCU, San Diego State and BYU. Six of the FBS teams they played had losing records. They’re also not known for attracting the best talent in the country. That’s why a two-loss SEC team can win it all, because children in the South are born holding a football and can run a sub-five-second 40-yard dash before kindergarten.

Nobody was too interested in seeing the spectacle that Hatch put on. U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer showed up for all of three minutes, and U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl didn’t hang around long, either. Nonplussed, Hatch held sway for two hours, being told several different ways by Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman, in effect, “Tough titty.”

You would think such a dyed-in-the-wool conservative like Hatch would be in favor of the BCS. After all, it makes a ridiculous amount of money, and the bowls outside the BCS also generate a substantial amount of revenue for schools, conferences and the locality the bowl is located in. You think Shreveport wants to give away the Independence Bowl? Or Dallas the Cotton Bowl? Not so much.

While just about every other sport in the known world competes with a playoff or a points system, high-level college football does not. So it is. This sport, founded and dominated by northeastern teams at the beginning, was successfully hijacked by Neanderthals in the South and Midwest that name their children after famous players and coaches, and spend a fortune on RVs and season tickets. A couple, told in Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, did not attend their daughter’s wedding because she made the mistake of scheduling it on the day of the Alabama-Tennessee game. She knew better, but did it anyway. We back the parents.

But, these fans do not have the money or the time to follow their school through three, four or five games away from home in a playoff. It’s fine for the “minor leagues” of college football, but FBS is about dollars. It’s as close to a professional sports atmosphere as you can get in amateur athletics.

Yes, the BCS is not perfect, but it is a good compromise between the playoff system and the old bowls/polls system. And if Hatch wants his Utes to get in the national championship game, he should advise Utah’s athletic department to join the Pac-10.