My renewed interest in college football, thanks to the surprising success of my Baylor Bears, inspired this post. What are some of the most worthless institutions or practices in America? Here are a few in my book:

• Bowl Championship Series (BCS) – Every sport I know of, from Little League to the pros, offers some type of competition system that produces a legitimate champion. Many use a traditional playoff system. Some use a hybrid of round-robin and traditional playoff or a double-elimination playoff. However, there is one exception: college football. Instead of the playoff system that everyone wants except the BCS commissioner and a few businessmen, college football uses an incomprehensible computer ranking system to determine which two teams get to play for the national championship. Only the schools from certain high-profile conferences have any realistic chance at being ranked in the top two. Every year, it seems, at least one undefeated school is left out by the BCS. Why does the BCS exist? Supposedly it’s about money, but I fail to see how an eight-team playoff system couldn’t help but bring in more TV and ticket revenue than the existing system.
• Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – OK, is the TSA truly worthless? No. We must have some sort of security for our airlines. However, the TSA doesn’t make me feel much safer. It spends billions of dollars creating the illusion of safety – adding fancy machines, employing tens of thousands of people, enforcing ridiculous rules – to make the public feel safer about flying. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make flying or anything else completely safe. Undercover agents routinely pass contraband through TSA checkpoints. Anyone who really wants to get around the TSA’s rules (or any other security) will find a way to do so. In the meantime, both airline pilots and 70-year-old grandmothers have to take their shoes off and put all their liquids in bottles of a certain size and store them in a plastic baggie for scanning to satisfy the rules. But Grandma can take her huge, pointy knitting needles onboard because they aren’t considered a weapon.
• Electoral College – We think we elect our President, but all we really do is vote to decide which other people get to elect our President. Margin of victory is meaningless. If the presidential candidate wins a majority within a state, he/she wins ALL of the electoral votes cast by some mysterious group of people for that state. As a result, it is possible to get more votes than one’s opponent and yet still lose the election. It happened in 2000. Like him or hate him, Al Gore won the election but didn’t get the job.
• Filibuster in the US Senate – Legislating is hard work. It’s even harder when yahoos from one party have the power to prevent new legislation from even coming to a vote. Both parties have been guilty of this act numerous times. It’s a wonder the Senate gets ANYTHING done.
• Telemarketing – Need I say more? On the plus side, ditching our landline has almost eliminated telemarketing calls.

Sorry for the negative post, but I’m going to be very upset if TCU doesn’t get to play for the national championship because of a stupid computer. What else can you think of?