Wake me when it's over. It is? Hard to tell. I had trouble staying awake during college football's Bowl Championship Series -- let alone recalling what occurred.

I love college football -- the bands, the pageantry, the ohh-ah so lacking in the pros. This year was a wonderwork for the college game. Huge upsets. Great rivalries. A late-season series of Oh-my-God, can-you-believe that games. A season like that deserves a coda -- the kind of playoff system used in other college sports. Instead, we got the mind-numbing Bowl Championship Series. Stick a fork in the BCS. Lord, is it done.

A playoff would link the top 16 teams in the writers and coaches polls. Syracuse might have made it. Better yet, we'd have avoided LSU's demolition of Illinois. Or Florida bombing Maryland -- or Miami, Nebraska. These dogs barked because the best teams weren't playing in the biggest games. The computer-based BCS was supposed to fix that. It hasn't. It won't.

Major bowls block a playoff system. OK, make them part of the final Sweet 16 tourney. College presidents say it would needlessly extend the season. OK, explain college hoops' 25 to 35 games. Common sense dictates a playoff, the sooner the better. That's why it won't occur.

Ed Koch, former Mayor of New York, was famed for asking, "How'm I doing?" Last week Rudolph Giuliani completed two terms as Mayor. How'd he do? About as well as a public official can.

When Giuliani took office, crime was King, and sleaze First Minister. Times Square was a cesspool. The inmates ran the asylum: Graffiti scrawling and prostitution were ignored. Giuliani changed that. He knew that minor offenses led to more serious crime. So under him, even broken windows were prosecuted. He knew that cops felt under siege. So he gave them crime-tracking intelligence and increased autonomy. He knew the middle class felt afraid. So the Italian immigrant's son became the tribune of the Forgotten New Yorker.

Since 1993, New York's murder rate has dropped by 70 percent, rape 40, robbery 68. New York has 74 percent fewer auto thefts, and 71 percent fewer shooting victims. The FBI calls New York the Nation's safest city. Giuliani was Churchill in a baseball cap long before September 11.

Since then, he has become -- what? -- icon, institution, symbol of his city. Perhaps he will run for President some day. Churchill spoke of our "finest hour." Giuliani's has been the entire last eight years.

What's television's favorite four-letter word. Love? Hate? Fear? How about Bias -- the title of a new book by longtime CBS correspondent Bernard Goldberg. The subtitle: "A CBS Insider Exposes how the Media distorts the news."

Five years ago Goldberg wrote an op/ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. Its thesis: Liberals in the national media slant and pervert the truth. Hardly shocking: Polls show that the networks, news magazines, and leading papers regard Middle America as a giant trailer park. Yet for his expose Goldberg was shunned.

Bias is Goldberg's answer to CBS -- and what a rapier it is. He shows how the networks identity radical feminist Catherine McKinnon as a "noted law professor" -- while Phyllis Schlafly becomes "a conservative spokeswoman." Rush Limbaugh is "a conservative talk show host," while Rosie O'Donnell, calling Rudy Giuliani "New York's village idiot," is not called a liberal at all. The evidence is damning -- TV's own words.

Maybe thee three networks should ask why since 1994 their share of the evening news audience has plunged from 51 to 43. This week Bias hit 6th on the Times best-seller list. Walter Cronkite used to say, "That's the way it is." No, Walter. This book is the way it is.

Last week I panned Bill Clinton's quest for a legacy -- noting that it exists: the blue dress with his DNA. Turns out I spoke too soon. Another legacy now fills Clinton's plate: a fellow too busy eating pizza with Monica to make Osama Bin Ladin eat crow.

Recently the New York Times, a Clinton admirer, ran a story. In effect it says: Clinton let Al Qaeda get away.

In 1993, Bin Ladin bombed the World Trade Center. Clinton did nothing. Former aide George Stefanopoulos explains it wasn't "a successful bombing." It killed two and injured hundreds. Apparently thousands had to die before success met reprisal.

In 1996, political advisor Dick Morris asks Clinton to launch a high-profile terrorist effort. Clinton did not. In 1998, truck bombs detonated U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Clinton fired a volley of cruise missiles. Nothing more. Too busy lying during impeachment to act like a real man, and President, would.

Another aide explains how fighting terrorism wasn't "Clinton's thing." September 11 that thing killed more Americans than any day in our history. Mr. President, don't worry about your legacy. Osama and Monica, batting one-two.

The great broadcaster Dizzy Dean hated statistics. Called 'em "statics." Avoided 'em like the plague. Statistics aren't the millennium in the morn. They can, however, permit a little light. Like the just-released number of homicides in Rochester for the year 2001.

Prior to 2000, homicides had dropped in Rochester for 5 of the past 6 years. By contrast, this marks the second straight year homicides rose. Some say don't worry. Numbers pale beside the mid-60s of the 1980s. True: The sky isn't falling. But the sun's not shining either. Why?

One reason is pproximity Crime festers in high-density areas. Another is education. Many crimes are committed by young people. They would drop if kids were in school -- would finish school -- then pursue a trade. Maybe the greatest cause for homicide is the battered two-parent family. Dan Quayle was right. It doesn't take a community to raise a child. It takes two parents -- loving, teaching. Finally, truly religious people don't kill other people. Homicides would drop if more churches taught right and wrong.

This analysis isn't fashionable. It is, hhowever right. Ronald Reagan once said, "The old ways are best." Truism, not statistic. Dizzy Dean would enjoy.

Want to express your opinion on these topics to Curt? Click here.