If you missed last week's news about changes in the Bowl Championship Series, here's a synopsis:

Tefel tpotyu yt0t brksy/ 9uytlk mnbwsa.

Got it?

If so, contact Homeland Security. Anyone who can speak coherently about the most recent changes in the BCS is capable of breaking coded messages between al-Qaida cells. Forget about college football. Your country needs you.

The BCS might not be the best method for determining a national champion in college football, but it's a great testing tool - worthy of the Wonderlic Test or at least a sports management curriculum. The history of BCS tweaking is a course in itself.

But if you're disinterested in testing your threshold for boredom or your ability to assimilate abstruse concepts, don't worry about what the BCS did last week. Instead, concern yourself with what the BCS is going to do.

The Associated Press has withdrawn its media poll from the BCS, which must now find new voters. Otherwise, BCS voters would be limited to college football coaches, many of whom would rather divulge their ATM pin number than their top-25 ballot.

The coaches are taken. Sportswriters are no longer an option. What's left?

I thought about retired officials. They know the game and are conditioned to being objective. Then, I thought about what my wife, Melinda, said after Tennessee lost to Auburn in the SEC championship game last December.

"The officials stole it from us," she insisted.

"Stole it?" I responded. "Auburn had 31 first downs. UT had 9."

"Somebody paid them," she said, ignoring the statistics.

Her misguided conspiracy theory gave me another idea. What about real criminals?

Why limit them to making license tags or picking up litter? Why not let them help determine a national champion?

I'm not talking about violent offenders. I'm talking about white-collar guys like Pete Rose, Art Schlichter and Denny McLain.

I once interviewed McLain while he was in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. The former Detroit Tigers pitcher dazzled me with his knowledge of college football, which was in season at the time.

Why not put that kind of expertise to work for the betterment of college football?

Coaches are so preoccupied with their own games, they rarely see any others. Prisoners have their weekends free - well, not exactly free, but they don't have to worry about a golf date, dinner engagement or weekend job. Bottom line: They're not going anywhere.

If you advertised for BCS voters in the nation's prisons, the response would be overwhelming. Then, it would just be a matter of interviewing and testing to determine the 60 most qualified BCS voters whose prison sentence wouldn't be up before the end of football season.

Each voter would have cable television, Direct TV, and a battery of television sets impaneled in his cell wall so he could watch more than one game at once. Prison guards could monitor the viewing to make sure the voters don't switch to "Escape from Alcatraz," "Shawshank Redemption" or something similarly appealing.

You couldn't ask for a more captive voting audience. And if football fans resented the final vote, they could always argue - with more credibility than ever - "They stole it from us."

Sports editor John Adams may be reached at adamsj@knews.com.