On Saturday, the Downtown Athletic Club in New York continued a tradition started in 1936.

They awarded the Heisman Memorial Trophy to the “best” college football player in the country.

This year’s winner was USC’s Matt Leinart, fittingly the starting quarterback on the No. 1 team in the country.

What does the award mean? Why is it such a big deal?

I don’t have the answers to these questions.

Previous Heisman winners are talked about as if they are in a fraternity with a strong brotherhood. That’s funny; I didn’t see Carson Palmer paddling Leinart on Saturday night. These guys don’t even know each other.

I don’t see why the Heisman is considered any more important than MVP or player-of-the-year awards in other sports.

Winning the Heisman is not a clear indicator of success in the NFL, nor is it a sign that the winner’s team will hoist the championship trophy after the title game of the dreaded BCS.

Some recent winners of the award include Eric Crouch, Andre Ware, Rashaan Salaam, Danny Wuerffel and Charlie Ward. Hey, at least Ward had a decent NBA career.

I know the honor is based purely on performance in college and not on potential in the NFL.

However, since 1990, the success rate of the Heisman winners in the NFL has been so low that you wonder whether the award is actually going to the most talented collegiate player.

Last year’s recipient, Oklahoma quarterback Jason White, choked in the BCS national championship game against LSU.

How can you give out an award to the best player in the country before the biggest games of the year are even played?

The true sign of greatness in collegiate athletics is how well these young players perform when they are put in big-game situations for the first time.

It is impossible to tell who the best player in the nation is before observing the best teams in the nation compete in their bowl games. It will be interesting to see if Leinart performs like the top player in America against White’s Sooners in the Orange Bowl.

I will probably tune in to the game because I’m a sports fan and that’s what I do. It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The BCS system is absurd and should be gotten rid of immediately. It’s not even worth watching the games when the system does not determine the best team in the country.

California might have been the fourth-best squad in all of college football this year, yet they will be playing in the lowly Holiday Bowl because of conference-champion commitments made by the BCS.

Nobody wants to see the Big East champion in a major bowl game if there isn’t a team in the conference that can compete with anybody in the top half of the SEC.

I refuse to care about a system that doesn’t decide a title on the field.

The Auburn Tigers had an undefeated season, yet they will be playing in a meaningless Sugar Bowl game.

There are too many bowl games in college football, with some of them featuring mediocre teams that have no business even playing past October.

The bowl games are no longer about tradition – they are about greedy schools, conferences and companies.

And they definitely don’t determine who the best team in the land is.

Until there are playoffs to decide the champion on the field, I can’t make myself care about this stupid system.

Wake me up for the next Illini basketball game.