Utah perfect choice for No. 1

This isn't about sending a message to the Bowl Championship Series.

Everyone knows the BCS is messed up, and it's not going away anytime soon.

This is about doing what's right, about following Associated Press guidelines of putting aside reputations and voting for the most deserving teams. This season, the most deserving is undefeated Utah.

So, barring a rout by Florida or Oklahoma in Thursday's BCS title game in Miami, our AP ballot will have the Utes at the top. And, according to an informal AP poll of its voters, others are considering doing the same.

Still, it's a long shot that the Utes (13-0) will garner enough votes to claim the top spot after their 31-17 pounding of Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Too much bias against non-BCS schools remains, and the threat of legal action by Utah's attorney general doesn't help.

But if the Top 25 poll is about what happens on the field and not someone's opinion of what could or should happen, voters need to take a long look at Utah's accomplishments.

Every other team has to explain away a loss.

"I can't think of another team more deserving of being No. 1 right now," wrote CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd from South Florida. "The Utes just took a small chunk of relevance out of that game they're playing down here in a few days.

"What do they call it, the BCS title game? That sounds kind of shallow after what happened in New Orleans."

• IN AND OUT -- Kenith Pope joined Iowa State's new staff on Tuesday, lasting just one season as UNLV's running backs coach.

Pope couldn't resist returning to the Big 12 Conference, where he was an assistant at Texas A&M before joining the Rebels.

There's no word on Pope's replacement. But he might not be the last to go as other schools are looking at Rebels assistants.

Coach Mike Sanford doesn't plan to change the staff on his own, and he never pursued former New Mexico coach and defensive mastermind Rocky Long, who was hired as San Diego State's defensive coordinator.

Sanford seems content to stick with coordinator Dennis Therrell and hope the defense will improve as it becomes more familiar with Therrell's scheme next fall in his second season, the way the Rebels' offense made strides in 2008, its second year in coordinator Todd Berry's system.

• MORE FUN IN WRIGLEY -- The cuddly Cubs have some bite to them now that combustible outfielder Milton Bradley has joined the mix.

"The Cubs are basing their World Series hopes and dreams on a ticking bomb not exploding, on Milton Bradley being a steady force," wrote Chicago Sun-Times columnist Greg Couch.

"Boom.

"It's possible. Dennis Rodman is possible. Winning the lottery is possible, and that's how this comes across, as the Cubs so desperate that they are taking everything they have and putting it into lottery tickets."

COMPILED BY MARK ANDERSON LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL