Following another year in which the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s national championship was marred by controversy, namely the absence of USC, the top-ranked team in both the AP Poll and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, changes have been implemented to once again tweak the system.

By reducing the Bowl Championship Series formula to just three parts, the BCS committee hopes to limit the controversy that has surrounded the BCS championship since its inception in 1998. The committee will also add a fifth game to the BCS picture, but will not implement the change until the 2006 season.

“The system needed to be tweaked,” USC coach Pete Carroll said. “We saw that last year first hand here at USC.”

Under the new system, the Coaches Poll, the AP Poll, and a combination of six computer polls will each count for a third of a team’s BCS ranking. Quality wins, strength of schedule, and team record have all been eliminated from the BCS formula as they are considered to be factors that are taken into account when the polls are created.

When figuring the two major polls into the formula, the BCS will now use the voting points earned divided by the total points possible (1625 AP Poll, 1525 Coach’s Poll) to determine the BCS points. From the six computer rankings, the high ranking and the low ranking will be eliminated and the remaining four rankings will be averaged to determine the computer value, which will be added to the values generated by the two human polls.

The question for the BCS committee is whether or not this new system will work any better than past versions of the BCS formula.

“We want to get this right” BCS chairman Kevin Weiberg said. “We want to have as much consensus as we possibly can.”

With most college presidents and chancellors still steadfastly positioning themselves against a potential playoff-style championship, the BCS committee simply tried to resolve issues with the system they see as the best alternative.

“There is not a perfect tool out there in this system that will eliminate all controversy.” Weiberg said.

Under the new system, USC would have faced LSU in last year’s BCS championship game, thereby pitting the top two teams in the polls. What remains to be seen is whether the system can avoid the controversy that the other incarnations of the BCS formula have faced.

The second major change for the BCS will be the addition of a fifth game. The “double-hosting” model, which will go into effect for the 2006 season, will see the four current BCS bowls played as usual, followed a week later by a championship game to be played at the site of one of the four BCS bowls, which will be determined by a rotation.

By adding a fifth BCS game, two additional teams will reap the financial windfall that the BCS has become. With two more spots in the BCS, there will be an added opportunity for some of the schools from smaller conferences to earn a big pay day.

The other benefit of the new system is it will allow the BCS bowls to maintain traditional conference ties that had been disrupted or broken since the inception of the BCS. The Rose Bowl, for example, has always had ties with the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences, but in seasons in which the Rose Bowl was slated to host the national championship game, those traditional ties were broken. With the addition of the “double-hosting,” the Rose Bowl can maintain its traditional ties, even in the seasons in which it will host the national title game.

A second model was originally presented that would have added a fifth bowl game in which the title game pitted two of the winners from other BCS games. The format, which would have been more of a first step toward a playoff system, was rejected by a committee of school presidents who have consistently staved off a playoff system for football.

Not all of the details are settled just yet, but the Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl will all remain involved under the new format, with the fifth game yet to be named. The name of the fifth bowl as well as many of the other details yet to be worked out should be resolved later this fall when the BCS and ABC begin negotiations over a new television deal.

–The Associated Press contributed to this story