OPEN MIKE

By foxsports
Published

VAC'S WHACKS

* It's a wonderful public service Anthony Mason is performing, trying to push Eddy Curry back into something resembling a professional basketball player, but unless Mason is willing to agree to a heart transplant - putting his into Curry - I don't like the odds of a happy ending here.

* He's coached only 24 games, so you have to believe he'll get better at this. But right now the weakest part of Rex Ryan's game is clock management, and it isn't close, and one of these weeks it'll cost his team a game the way it almost did Monday

* I really thought we were past seeing Eli Manning throw the kinds of interceptions he twice threw in Houston last Sunday. It didn't matter then because the Texans looked like bigger frauds than Charlie Ponzi, but it's a habit he'd be wise to part with sooner rather than later.

* The best part about the new "Hawaii 5-0" is the same thing that was one of the best parts of the r e c e n t l y ompleted season of "Entourage":

ENOUGH OF THIS BCS! CROWN TRUE COLLEGE FOOTBALL CHAMP

I USED to care less about the BCS, mostly because we live in New York City, and New York City hasn't been anywhere close to the college football nexus since Fordham and NYU were filling the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium on ancient Saturday afternoons a couple of generations ago.

Maybe that's because when it comes to college football, I've always considered myself a dinosaur because I never had a problem with the way things used to be, when writers would determine one champion and coaches another and if they happened to reach a different consensus . . . well, that's life. If it meant people in the middle of March were taking sides between Penn State and USC, was that really a bad thing? Was that a capital offense.

The BCS? I looked at it like a Betamax machine: slightly better than what we had before, not nearly as good as what could be.

A couple of things changed my mind. First off, there will be no going back to the Old Ways, so if that's officially been buried forever, why would the "solution" be something so flawed? There is also the matter of how the BCS standings are determined, a ridiculous set of polls and computers that are necessarily stacked in favor of the big boys from the big six money conferences.

But the thing that knocked me off the fence, once and forever, is a wonderful new book called "Death to the BCS" by Dan Wetzel, Jeff Passan and Josh Peter, a work whose title would suggest a furious screed (and, make no mistake, there is anger lingering on almost every page) but is at its core a love letter to logic, meticulously reported and written with the kind of clarity you suspect a preacher aspires to when trolling for possible converts.

It is impossible to read this book and not see how ridiculous it is that college football, the singlemost-important college sport, is the one that refuses to crown a legitimate champion.

And unless you are one of the culprits whom the book chases most relentlessly - conference commissioners who enjoy the cartel they've created; presidents who wrong-headedly talk about missed class time when almost no class time would really be missed; bowl executives terrified that the sporting equivalent of The Mob's no-show jobs would vanish - it's difficult to understand how anyone could reside on the other side of this issue.

It just makes too much sense.

And it's a perfect time to engage in this debate, a week after Alabama was likely knocked out of a chance to defend its national title, the very week when the first listing of official BCS standings are revealed. If those standings had been released last week, Boise State would've been No. 1 and the SEC would've been shut out to slot No. 6 (LSU). And while there are some who would cite this as proof that the little guy really can thrive in The System, it only reinforces the problem.

No one is saying Boise should be handed anything. If they win a championship, it should be because they beat an Alabama or an Ohio State along the way. The BCS can be just as unfair to the power people, too, it turns out.

Great system.

WHACK BACK AT VAC

Dave Schwartz: Asking Yankees fans to feel sorry for A.J. Burnett would be like asking Giants fans (which I proudly am) to feel sorry for Ray Handley when he coached the Giants. I'm sure the Giants' losing must have bothered him just like it did us.

Vac: I have to admit, sometimes ideas look a lot better in the computer than they do in the newspaper. Which is to say: there is no need to grade Burnett on a curve.

Jerry Jodice: Let's be truthful: the female "sports analysts" who work NFL and NBA games are mostly hired as eye candy, not because they "played the game." I am not defending unsavory actions on the part of male athletes (or males in general). But when you have an attractive woman interviewing a basketball player as he walks off the court and he's looking at her, it's not her microphone he's looking at.

Vac: Let's take it a step further: Most right-thinking people thought it terrible what happened to Erin Andrews in that hotel room; was I the only one who thought it interesting that ESPN had no problem with some of her ensuing wardrobe choices on "Dancing with the Stars?"

Ben Testa: The umpiring in the playoffs is so bad, maybe the umpires should start taking steroids.

Vac: Can we settle for sodium pentothal?

Danny Levy: As a Jets fan, I'm happy for the season we had with Brett Favre, it didn't end well but it was a fun ride. And as a Jet/Met/Knick/Ranger fan that's all I hope for anymore. I've seen two winners in 120 seasons (4 x 30 years each). Almost isn't too bad anymore.

Vac: It really is easy to forget all the love that trailed No. 4 in '08 when the Jets were 8-3 and making Super Bowl reservations.

Every Sunday, Mike Vaccaro will respond to readers' comments and burning questions at vac@nypost.com