I really wanted to do it, but, much to my regret, chickened out.

Burn my media credential to the BCS championship game.

I was going to melt the sucker down, right outside the gates on game day, in front of my media colleagues, as a means of protesting what everyone knew was a sham, this bogus BCS thing, college football's counterfeit championship, its funny money, passed out to the public while certain powers-that-be pocket the real green and grub it to themselves.

How stupid are we, anyway?

Why does anyone accept -- and, in some cases, embrace -- an antiquated system for crowning a national champion in college football that is better suited to 1939, not 2009? Are we still wearing raccoon coats, waving pennants and swallowing goldfish? Why is ESPN loading up $125 million a year to televise this imposter for another four years? This bastardized way of naming a champ?

Well. I was gonna make a statement, and I whiffed.

Assigned a couple of years ago to cover Urban Meyer's first trip to that so-called title game, when Florida faced Ohio State in Glendale, Ariz., I didn't want to show, didn't want to dignify the phony endeavor by giving it one drop of ink.

But the paper asked me to go, so I went.

Standing outside the stadium, I came thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis close to torching the plastic credential in front of a horde of reporters entering the building. I double-clutched, not quite sure how to explain to the boss why I wasted two nights hotel and airfare on my little demonstration instead of completing the task he sent me to do.

It would have been worth it.

I was thinking about that missed opportunity Thursday night, watching Florida and Oklahoma do their little fraudulent dance, the way it is done every year, seeking a national championship that is actually nothing more than a BCS championship.

And there's a huge difference between the two.

BCS championship contenders are appointed, sent to a game because somebody and some computer determined they deserved a shot.

While the little guys do it right, by way of a 16-team playoff, there has never really been a true national champion in college football's top division. It's always been appointed, the only difference now being that two teams get appointed a chance to play for the trophy.

That solves nothing. Ask Texas. Ask USC. Ask Utah.

If the Sugar Bowl champion had been assigned the way the national champion has been for so many years, the way the two teams that play for the BCS title currently are, Utah never would have been awarded that assignment. Alabama would have gotten it, because almost everyone thought the Crimson Tide would beat the Utes.

We saw how that went.

It's remarkable how much can be learned about a team when it actually gets a chance to show how good it is -- on the field, not in a poll.

One of the best things about the Utes' success this season is that it flew straight into the grille of conventional wisdom, of traditional regional prejudices, of those who have been satisfied with the sadly lacking status quo.

They deserve the championship as much as, probably more than, anybody else, or at least the chance to play for a title. They're the only team that never tasted defeat this year, all while playing four ranked opponents, and impressively beating Alabama in what was a home game for the Tide.

Here's what the Utes proved, better than any team in the history of college football: What people think and what is real are two different things.

Why legitimize the former when the latter is also an option?

The answer to that question is an unhappy one.

It centers on money and greed and corruption. It swirls around certain powers -- school presidents, bowl reps, league commissioners -- getting their take, and keeping as much of it as they can, at the expense of growing the pie for everyone and sharing the wealth.

That last part is what a proper playoff would do, in addition to providing the same chance Utah got in punking Alabama to 16 teams that could, over a four-week period, uncover a real champion.

Those who say the regular season is already part of an extended playoff that gives significance to every game, leading to a suitable champion, haven't been paying attention.

Texas thinks it's No. 1. USC thinks it's No. 1. Utah thinks it's No. 1. Florida thinks it's No. 1.

That discussion isn't quaint or cute or useful in any way. It's just frustrating and unfulfilling, especially for the players.

I didn't go to this year's BCS championship. But if I'd been asked, I'd like to think I would this time have found the guts to light up that credential and watch it melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. And I'm pleased to know that in the run-up to Thursday night, most of the talk in Miami wasn't about the game, it was about the ridiculous system that elevates a mythical champion instead of an authentic one.

That's a step forward.

GORDON MONSON hosts "The Monson and Graham Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 1280 AM The Zone. He can be reached at gmonson@sltrib.com.