By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

With the presidents and chancellors of 44 universities uniting yesterday to demand an overhaul of the lucrative monopoly known as the Bowl Championship Series, one participant, Utah State president Kermit Hall, likened it to "ants scratching at the sugar bowl."

Actually, they were "scratching" at the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar Bowls.

All of them symbols of the exclusionary and predatory BCS, which allows six conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern — to rule the purse strings of college athletics by controlling access to the richest football bowl games.

Now, with a long overdue united front and collective resolve to confront the BCS, there is hope to at least give the other half of the Division I-A schools entry to the marquee games and a national title when their performance merits it.

For years, beginning with the Bowl Coalition (1992-94), through the Bowl Alliance (1995-97) and, now, the BCS (1998-current), a handful of well-to-do conferences have greatly enriched themselves and held down their competition by determining the rules and formats for the postseason.

While the Big Six and Notre Dame have divided up $80 million a year in bowl money, the other five conferences and independents have fought over the scraps of less than $10 million annually.

That has dramatically widened the divide between the haves and have-nots on all fronts: gender equity, coaches salaries, facilities, recruiting, etc.

Along the way there have been, from time to time, plaintive, even angry, cries from the disenfranchised — the Western Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mountain West, Mid-American, Sun Belt and some independents.

But not until yesterday, when 44 of the 53 schools vowed to put their collective weight behind several reforms, including BCS access, has there been a prayer of change.

With an avowed willingness to do whatever it takes — including going to Congress or the courts — the newly-formed Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform has served notice that change is coming. Or, else.

The opening might not come until after the 2005 season when the BCS contract with ABC-TV expires, but at least there is action underway and hope on the horizon.

The hope is that next time there is an 11-0 Tulane (1998), a 13-0 Marshall (1999), 13-1 Brigham Young (1996) or 12-1 Boise State (2002) — all of them denied marquee bowls — there will be an appropriate reward to go with it.

Closer to home, you'd like to think if the University of Hawai'i ever has a lights-out season when it runs the table on the competition, it will have an opportunity to play in a featured bowl game or compete for the national title.

You'd like to believe that the opportunities open to UH in wahine volleyball, men's volleyball, baseball and, indeed, all the other sports it in which it competes, would be available in football, too.

"Right now, we're at someone else's mercy," said June Jones, the UH coach.

Maybe not for much longer.