Even though his surging conference has three teams ranked inside the Top 15 -- and two of them likely will get shut out of the BCS bowls -- Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese yesterday sharply advised other major-college coaches and league administrators to quit yapping about the BCS system.

If they don't like it, said the man who used to preside over the system, change it.

"The complaining doesn't affect anything. Last time I heard, the computers don't have ears," Tranghese said yesterday on a conference call. "If you want a playoff, go to your presidents, go to the commissioner of your league and lobby for it."

Tranghese called for logic at a time when coaches, media and fans continue to clamor about certain teams, conferences or injustices when his league could have seen an undefeated champion frozen out of the new national championship game.

"I hear people talking about non-conference schedules; they ought to look in the mirror," Tranghese said, whose conference posted an 11-7 record against other BCS leagues and a 27-8 mark against Division I-A foes. "The pressure of competing in a system, the BCS -- which is far from perfect -- has led to more coaches lobbying and criticizing.

"I applaud Pete Carroll. My last year [2003] when I served as the BCS chair, when LSU played Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, USC got left out, and everybody agreed that USC should have been in the game but the computers shut them out. But you never heard Pete Carroll cry. I admire him for that. Everybody should take the high road.

"When you start pointing fingers at other programs, that's ridiculous. Go back to your program."

Other Tranghese tidbits:

He considered Michigan State's hiring of Cincinnati's Mark Dantonio part of the double standard for the Big East: People may criticize the league, but many respect its coaches -- what with Rutgers' Greg Schiano being mentioned as a leading candidate at Miami and West Virginia's Rich Rodriguez and Louisville's Bobby Petrino having their names bandied about for openings regularly. "What I'm more worried about is if nobody wants to hire our coaches," Tranghese said. "I'm not convinced we're going to have other coaching changes. I don't know that. But if [programs] want them, they're going to have to pay hefty, hefty prices [in buyouts] to get them."

He believes there's still a chance for two teams to get BCS bowls. If only the Big East champion, Louisville or Rutgers, represents the league in a BCS bowl, it isn't a huge conference loss.

With the Gator Bowl angling toward Texas or the Big 12 championship loser, either Nebraska or Oklahoma, instead of the co-champ/BCS-rankings runner-up from the Big East, that means the Sun Bowl in El Paso and the Texas Bowl in Houston will get 11-1 or 10-2 teams above their non-New Year's bowl stature. Tranghese said the bowls' wish lists are subject to change. "Where they lean on Monday oftentimes doesn't have anything to do with where they're going to be on Saturday night," he said.