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If you want to chase a championship, play the best.

Tranghese sent that directive loud and clear last week in New Orleans as a representative of the Bowl Championship Series. It had more meaning because Tranghese is also a member of the NCAA's powerful Division I Men's Basketball Committee.

One common and controversial denominator in the sports is scheduling.

"I would like to see some (BCS) element that really rewards people for playing a quality non-conference schedule," said Tranghese, who watched conference member Virginia Tech lose to Florida State in the Sugar Bowl. "I think there are people that are hiding."

During his stay, he provided one man's future vision of both sports' championships.

Tranghese, 55, is the only member of the basketball committee who is also a BCS commissioner. That means he helps control two of the biggest sports events in the country. Wearing his BCS hat, Tranghese is expected to approve a proposed renewal of the BCS by ABC during meetings in April. Wearing his committee hat, he will once again help select the field of 64 for the tournament.

Strength of schedule is at the core of both championships. There is a schedule strength component to the Ratings Percentage Index used by the basketball committee to help select and seed teams in March. The first official RPI of the season will be figured later this month by NCAA statistics coordinator Gary Johnson.

Many pretenders who purport to know the RPI formula have sprung spawning a maze of numbers for hoopheads. But even the committee won't get its first look at Johnson's one, true RPI until it gathers in Indianapolis in March to select the field.

The BCS poll also uses its own strength of schedule component compiled by Bloomington, Ind., math expert Jeff Sagarin. Because those numbers, unlike the NCAA's RPI, are available to the public, it has become a controversial point of discussion. The discussion figures to get more heated.

"Personally, I'm a proponent of making the strength of schedule a very large part of (the BCS) but being a member of the basketball committee I understand how the RPI works," Tranghese said. "You can attain strength of schedule by insulating yourself in a conference. I will tell you I am opposed to that."

That was a not-so-veiled swipe at Kansas State, which has gone 22-3 over the past two seasons but has yet to earn even a New Year's Day bowl bid since the BCS began. Most of the blame goes toward Kansas State's non-conference schedule which last season featured Temple, Texas-El Paso and Utah State.

But even though Kansas State did finish the regular season with only one loss for the second consecutive season, it was ignored. Instead, Michigan and Tennessee, a pair of teams with two losses, were selected as at-large teams by BCS bowls for their familiarity and market size.

Virginia Tech has been under fire for its schedule.(AP)

The basketball committee has used some form of the RPI since 1981. While the complete formula is not public, it is only one small component used by the committee. The BCS is more of a work in progress. Expect changes to the complicated mathematical formula that is used to determine the top two teams in the country.

"Candidly, the Kansas State situation is a concern," Tranghese said later. " … If you're in a conference that's in the BCS, what you have to do is go out and play people. You have to put yourself at risk."

Kansas State has been a poster child, in its own mind, for BCS failures. There was talk among the BCS fathers to possibly add a fifth BCS bowl to address the Kansas State situation. But the conversation quickly died, in part because some of the existing bowls are having trouble selling tickets as it is.

Kansas State is seemingly doing little to address the situation itself. It has I-AA Massachusetts, Ball State (0-11 in 1999) and a weak Iowa team on next season's non-conference schedule.

"I know Virginia Tech has come under some criticism for their schedule," Tranghese said. "But I can tell you there are people who are playing in very good football conferences who play no one outside their conference. I would argue, 'How do I know how good they are?' They're not playing anybody but themselves."

The basketball committee has made it a public policy in the last few years to select the best at-large teams for the tournament, sometimes at the expense of powerhouses from major conferences. The ACC, for example, got only three teams in the tournament last year. That was the same number as the Missouri Valley.

College of Charleston proved itself worthy of at-large bids in recent years by playing top teams. Despite winning its league, Gonzaga took a risk by playing a national schedule. It paid off last season as the Bulldogs made a stunning run to the regional final.

"The lower conferences are always calling us saying, 'What should we do?' Tranghese said. "We say, 'Play people. You have nothing to lose.' "

In the BCS, the postseason stakes are a bit higher because there is no playoff. The conference champions of the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Big East and two at-large teams are guaranteed spots in a BCS bowl. But there is only one BCS bowl that decides the national championship.

That has fueled the outcry for a football playoff but the BCS commissioners remain unfazed. If they approve ABC's proposed extension, that would almost assuredly stiff-arm a playoff until at least 2007.

"People talk about a playoff," Tranghese said. "You can't create what you have in (New Orleans) for a playoff. In the NCAA Tournament we play week to week and transfer people to a new site. You cannot duplicate that in football, I don't believe."

If anything the BCS is getting more entrenched. It looks like the BCS will try to upgrade its credibility in the offseason by hiring an independent executive director. SEC commissioner Roy Kramer has said publicly that he wants to step away from running the system he created in the summer of 1998.

"He puts his butt on the line," Tranghese said. "I don't know how long Roy is going to work. He's talked openly about it. There was this view that Roy had somehow orchestrated stuff … It'll look better to the public. There will be a spokesman who is not from the SEC."