In a few days, hooded figures manipulating mysterious computer formulas will announce the final BCS standings and the lineup for college football's prestigious bowl games. Records, opponents, conference affiliations, polls and, it always seems, the phases of the moons of Saturn will be taken into account. But what if academics were factored in, too? What if there were an A/BCS -- an Academics-Included Bowl Championship Series?

I put that question to Lindsey Luebchow, a policy analyst of the New America Foundation and a contributor to Higher Ed Watch, one of the country's best blogs. Luebchow relentlessly dissects hypocrisy, double-talk and yammer in higher education, especially the big colleges' relationships to Congress. She is also a sports nut, and annually computes what the men's basketball Sweet 16 would look like based on educational achievement. So I asked her to do the same for the top 25 BCS teams.

Appropriately, Luebchow came up with a ratings procedure that's hard to understand -- just like the real BCS! Her reasoning: "The A/BCS formula starts with the football team's four-class average federal graduation rate, which includes all football players who entered college between 1997 and 2000 and graduated within six years. Football programs then earn or lose points based on three criteria. First, the gap between the graduation rate of the team and the overall school. Second, the gap between the black-white graduation rate disparity on the team and at the overall school. Third, the team's Academic Progress Rate, a measure developed by the NCAA that evaluates how many student-athletes are advancing toward a degree."

Without further ado, here are the big-bowl pairings if academics mattered, with the A/BCS ranking following the school name ...

For those rankings please click here, and visit the ESPN website.