It's been a week of getting shafted for Cal and J.J. Arrington. Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images

"Looks like you were right on about Cal getting passed over for the Rose Bowl bid. I don't think it would have made a bit of difference if Cal had won by 110 points instead of just 10. The 'West Coast Bias,' which should be more accurately named the 'Moral Bias,' would have prevented Cal from going. As conspiracy theories go, this one was easy to spot, especially after you pointed it out for us. I think I'll be busy all day doing laundry come Jan. 1."

This e-mail was sent to me by a person from Thousand Oaks, Calif., who identified his/her self as "SC Fan."

"I share your frustration. Cal got as hosed as any team I have ever seen. Tell me there wasn't some kind of conspiracy."

That one was from my close friend Andy Sands, a proud graduate of... Stanford.

When fans of your fiercest rivals tell you they think you got hosed, it makes you wonder. And clearly, these were not isolated sentiments. Among the USC alums sticking up for the Bears on TV was my old friend Ronnie Lott -- and I dare anyone to argue the point with him. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein bemoaned the Bears' plight to her colleagues in Washington, saying, "I know it may surprise some that a proud Stanford alum would take to the Senate floor to speak out on behalf of the Cardinal's bitter rival, but as a Senator representing the entire State of California, I feel it is my obligation to support all of our fine college athletes and to ensure that fairness and good sportsmanship prevails in the competitive arena."

And it doesn't stop there: I must say that as a proud Cal alum and unabashed proponent of the fourth-ranked Golden Bears' quest for a first Rose Bowl appearance since 1959, I've been truly touched by the outpouring of support that has flooded in from fans of Arizona, Washington and virtually every other Pac-10 school about the BCS nightmare that unfolded last weekend. I also appreciate the expressions of sympathy from graduates of Big Ten schools (who understand the mystical allure of the Rose Bowl) and from West Coast residents in general.

I know I'm not the only Cal fan who, in the wake of recent developments, has reassessed his/her loyalties in inter-regional clashes. For example, in the Orange Bowl -- and it amazes me that I am typing these words -- I am all about the Trojans beating Oklahoma.

If I didn't know better, I'd think there was a great cultural divide between certain regions of this great nation. But I know politics and sports don't mix. (Mack Brown, however, may not have gotten that memo.)

As for you jubilant Texas fans who've taken the time to weigh in, I'll address your e-mails in two parts:

To the majority of you who have supported your team with the intelligent discourse and respectful advocacy befitting graduates of an esteemed undergraduate institution, I painfully wish you well in Pasadena.

To the rest of you, some of whom have resorted to homophobic slurs and other hate-filled taunts -- wow, guys, it's only football. Enjoy West Hollywood, and remember: Some people might take that 'Hook 'Em Horns' thing the wrong way.

NOT TOTALLY UNBEARABLE: Did you really think I was going to let the Cal thing go after one item? Sure I was -- and J.J. Arrington didn't deserve to be a Heisman finalist, either.

Actually, in addition to the aforementioned spate of support, something else is helping us to get over the crushing agony of our Rose Bowl shaft: The five-year contract extension that Jeff Tedford signed the following day.

In addition to being perhaps the best coach in the nation, a man who turned around a moribund program and helped to change an entire football culture, Tedford stands for everything that is supposed to be good about college athletics. He cares about his players, closely monitors their academic progress (at a university which recently was ranked No. 2 in the world by the Times of London, though I hear Mack Brown was lobbying to drop Cal to seventh) and conducts himself with dignity on and off the field. By refusing to run up the score against Southern Mississippi last Saturday, and by never once campaigning for votes, Tedford showed that he'd rather honor the game than try to win a beauty contest.

Even his contract negotiations were above-board. Though wooed by Washington, Florida and other suitors -- and trust me, many NFL teams were interested as well -- Tedford instructed his agent, Mike Sullivan, to focus solely on striking an agreement with Cal. In dealing honestly and sincerely with university officials, Sullivan took a pick axe to the caricature of the sleazy sports agent and fashioned a mutually beneficial solution.

Because so many alums stepped up with financial commitments, and because university officials were willing to cope with the political ramifications of paying a coach so much money at a public institution, the deal makes Tedford one of the best-compensated coaches in the country. Along with a base salary of $1.5 million per year, Tedford will get a $2.5 million lump payout if he fulfills the entire contract -- "That's Jeff's way of announcing to the nation that he's not going anywhere," Sullivan says -- and can earn more from incentives such as winning a national championship. Suddenly, Cal has shattered the stereotypes about not being able to retain premier coaches and about Berkeley and big-time football being incompatible. With Tedford, Cal will be back in the Rose Bowl hunt for years to come, and hopefully the Bears can get there the old-fashioned way -- by winning the Pac-10.

Tedford, it should be noted, made a simple request upon signing his extension -- that the coaches make their votes public. Gee, I wonder why? One look at the vote breakdown between the poll's final two weeks involving Cal and Texas, as published in USA Today, shows plenty of suspicious activity -- Cal received four seventh- and two eighth-place votes after having had none of either the week before; Texas received two additional third-place votes from coaches who already had Cal no higher than fourth; the Longhorns also earned a second-place vote in each of the poll's final two weeks.

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The coaches, as a group, are resistant to making their votes public, but here's a word of advice to all Big 12 coaches with votes -- and to Alabama-Birmingham coach Watson Brown, who happens to be Mack's brother: If you want to absolve yourself of any doubt from skeptics such as myself, have the guts to tell us what selections you made on your final ballot and why. If not, some of us will continue to assume that you chose self-interest or conference solidarity over integrity. Personally, I'm willing to let it go, because so many other forces conspired to doom Cal -- the separate rules, each instituted as a knee-jerk reaction to previous outcomes, decreeing that Utah (by virtue of its top-six finish as a school from a non-BCS conference) and Texas (by virtue of its top-four finish as a non-champion from a BCS conference) would receive the two at-large invitations to the eight-team BCS party; the lack of a margin of victory component in the computer rankings (in the Sagarin ratings in which margin of victory was used, Cal finished third, while Texas was sixth); and Hurricane Ivan, which postponed the Sept. 16 game between Cal and Southern Miss until last Saturday, thus exposing the Bears to the possibility of being downgraded in the polls for failing to cover the 24-point spread.

The system as a whole is flawed, and predictably, some Cal fans aren't taking this lying down. One of them, Walter Fawcett -- whose wife, Joy, just completed one of the greatest careers in women's soccer history -- is encouraging fed-up college football fans to visit www.boycottbcssponsors.com as a means of registering their displeasure with the system. By going after Tostitos, Fed Ex, Nokia, ADT and Citibank, Fawcett and others hope to paint the debate in a color (green) the powers that be can understand.

Another Cal alum, Bob Stoll, takes specific issue with the fact that margin of victory no longer is used in the computer rankings. Stoll, a.k.a. Dr. Bob, runs a tote service for gamblers and thus knows a thing or two about calculating the relative strength of competing teams. He writes, "A few years back the BCS decided to take margin of victory out of the computer models to discourage teams from running up the score in order to help their computer ranking. But every one of those math-model guys would tell you that that margin of victory does matter and the models using margin of victory give them the best results as far as telling us which teams are stronger. Besides, most of those math models using margin of victory have a diminishing-returns principle built in to minimize the affect of blowouts over bad teams... It's like grading high school or college only in pass-fail grades, giving the smarter students no advantage in getting to college or grad school over a student that just barely passed all his classes... If the BCS is going to give the mathematicians a say as to which teams are beset, they shouldn't handcuff them by not allowing them to use the measures that work best."

A MODEST PROPOSAL: My final beef is with the Pac-10, both for selling out the sanctity of the Rose Bowl by signing onto a system that seems invariably to work against it -- and for having a pretty weak bowl tie-in for its second-place team.

While (non-BCS) second-place teams in the Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and other conferences get to play on New Year's Day against highly rated opponents, Cal was relegated to the InvisiBowl (OK, it's technically the Holiday Bowl, and yes, I'll be there) against 7-4 Texas Tech on Dec. 30 in San Diego.

That seems like an unjust place to send the No. 4 team in the country, so I have a suggestion: Rather than face the untidy spectre of having a .500 team -- or perhaps even a team with a losing record -- in the NFC playoffs, why not let the Golden Bears in as one of the wild cards?

AND FINALLY...: Hey, Notre Dame, it's cold out there, isn't it? Here are two words that perhaps you should have considered before acting: Bill Callahan.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Silver sounds off weekly on SI.com.