JIM DELANY and Grant Teaff have become college football's modern-day version of Laurel and Hardy.

If you've missed their act, it's a real riot when it comes to the Bowl Championship Series. They're so talented that each can play either role, especially the part of Oliver Hardy, who often told Stan Laurel, "well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."

The problem, however, is that Laurel and Hardy were actually trying to be a comedy team. Delany and Teaff want us to believe they are real deep thinkers when it comes to the BCS, but they keep making fools out of themselves and their organizations.

In response to President Obama's continued push for a playoff, Delany, the Big Ten Conference commissioner, told the Chicago Tribune last week that he doesn't think Obama "understands the complexity of the (BCS) issue."

Let's see if I have this straight. Delany believes the man who has an undergraduate degree from Columbia and a law degree from Yale isn't smart enough to comprehend the BCS?

Even in a place as red as Oklahoma, Obama detractors will tell you the President knows what that they know — the BCS is a monopoly and a farce.

Just when we thought no one could make a bigger mess out of the BCS than Delany's arrogant comment, along comes Teaff. The executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, Teaff insulted the intelligence of college football fans Wednesday with his latest contribution to the BCS propaganda.

Teaff announced several adjustments to the USA Today Top 25 coaches poll. The most dramatic change, which will start with the 2010 season, is that the coaches won't make their votes public.

The moves were made after the AFCA commissioned the Gallup World Poll to conduct a study of the coaches poll, which is one of three components used to select the teams that play for the BCS championship.

"It is important that we make the coaches poll the best that it can be," Teaff said in a release. "And putting in place the recommendations coming out of the Gallup study will ensure that."

Speaking of messes, excuse me while I throw up in my mouth. It's either that or die laughing at this joker's comments.

Why didn't Teaff just come out and say the AFCA used the Gullible World Poll? After all, the coaches apparently believe the college fan base is so naive that it can't see that the AFCA found the perfect scapegoat in the firm it hired for its self-serving poll.

"Hey, we'd love to keep our fans informed of what we're doing," is what these courage-challenged coaches are saying, "but we're just following orders from these the Gallup folks, who told us to revert to our secret society."

A majority of the AFCA membership has been upset ever since the organization agreed in 2005 to release the final votes each season of the 61 coaches who participate in the poll that is run in conjunction with USA Today.

There is so much wrong with yesterday's decision to make the poll confidential that I don't know where to start. Here's a good place: The next time a coach demands a player be accountable for his actions, he should totally understand when the athlete laughs in his face.

Accountability and transparency were the factors that finally forced coaches to reveal their final votes after 55 years of secrecy. If the BCS is going to refuse to conduct a playoff, the system used to select the championship contenders has to be trustworthy.

OU coach Bob Stoops stopped voting in the coaches poll last season. While Stoops declined to explain why he no longer wanted to participate, it wasn't difficult to figure out.

After OU won the 2007 Big 12 championship by beating Missouri for the second time that season, Stoops was flabbergasted to read that several coaches ranked the Tigers above the Sooners on their final ballots.

It was a blatant example of coaches being influenced by such things as voting for friends and not voting for other coaches out of spite; or coaches voting to help their conferences get into bowl games; or just being clueless.

If coaches want to continue preaching accountability, they need to join Stoops and decline to vote. That won't happen, so the AFCA should follow the example set by the Associated Press in December 2004, when that organization announced it was pulling its media poll out of the BCS selection process.

That also won't happen. Coaches would rather keep information from the fans who pay their huge salaries before admitting that media members were right.

So the only hope at this point is that more Laurel and Hardy teams continue to represent the BCS by making such a nice mess of it, that millions of fans finally get what they want, demand and deserve — a playoff.