Late Hits: Jan. 8

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Bowl system: College football’s leaders did it again: another tidy postseason with a clear-cut national champion and no doubt about the final two teams. The BCS is the “ShamWow” of postseasons.

Like Vince, the shill for the “As Seen On TV” towel says, why do you want to work twice as hard when the BCS solves everyone’s problems?

What’s that? Just ignore Utah, USC and Texas.

Utah: Perfection only gets you a New Year’s party on Bourbon Street, Utes, not a piece of the championship pie. After an impressive mass  e-mailing campaign to AP voters by Utah fans, Late Hits is voting the Utes No. 1 in computer literacy.

The Carolinas: Carolinians, North and South, can be proud of three things: the longevity of their cantankerous politicians, Krispy Kreme and Hootie and the Blowfish. No bragging rights can be claimed regarding their college football, though.

Six teams from the Carolinas made bowl trips. Only one — Wake Forest — went home a winner. North Carolina, East Carolina, N.C. State, Clemson and South Carolina weren’t so lucky. At least UNC, State, ECU and Clemson led at halftime.

A special merit badge goes to the Gamecocks, the only team in the country to lose a bowl to a school from the Big Ten (Iowa) this season.

Georgia Tech and Boston College: The Yellow Jackets, with a new coach and his 1950s offense, and the Eagles, without the NFL’s rookie of the year, qualified as the surprises of the ACC regular season. They also achieved the impossible — damaging the ACC’s already pathetic reputation with bowl losses.

Paul Johnson’s offense goes together with bowl games as well as Flomax sponsoring ESPN’s halftime show. (What are you supposed to do at halftime?) Given a month to prepare, even a team such as LSU that gave up on its season in October was ready to pummel the overachieving Yellow Jackets.

And Boston College lost to Vanderbilt, the same Vanderbilt that went 53 years without a bowl win and the same team that lost to Duke. No wonder the Eagles are looking for a new coach.

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder 

After beating Cincinnati in the Orange Bowl and ending the ACC’s eight-game losing streak in the BCS, Virginia Tech coach Frank Beamer said, “This game has special meaning for Virginia Tech.”

Make that a special meaning for the Hokies, the Doobie Brothers and no one outside the greater Blacksburg and Cincinnati areas.

The 6.1 national television rating was the lowest-rated BCS bowl ever (worse than the 2007 Orange Bowl with Wake Forest), and almost 16,000 tickets went unsold. A portion of those that were sold went for $1 on Internet ticket outlets.

According to The Associated Press, a good chunk of the crowd emptied after the Doobies’ halftime jam session. Even without Michael McDonald, the Doobie Brothers qualify as the official band of the BCS. What a fool believes, indeed.

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Coachspeak-to-English translation

“I don’t think anybody can beat the Trojans.”

— USC coach Pete Carroll after the Trojans’ 38-24 Rose Bowl win over Penn State

Translation: I mean, other than Oregon State.