WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bowl Championship Series set up to crown a college football champion shuts out too many schools and needs to be repaired, senators told representatives of the bowl system Wednesday.

"I don't know if you guys know how it looks to fans of teams that aren't part of this system," said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del. "It looks un-American. It really does. It looks unfair. It looks like a rigged deal."

Under the BCS system, six of the eight teams that compete in four elite bowl games come from the nation's six powerhouse football conferences leaving 107 college football teams to scramble for two slots in the BCS.

LaVell Edwards, the former football coach at Brigham Young University, said the BCS system also makes it harder for teams outside the alliance to recruit athletes, since there is little chance the players will ever be able to compete for a national championship.

BYU, which won the national championship in 1984, is the only team outside the six BCS conferences to have won a national championship since 1945.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a BYU graduate, said the current system raises enough questions of fairness that it is in college football's best interest to fix the BCS system instead of forcing Congress to intervene.

NCAA President Myles Brand said he is open to a system that would be more inclusive, but does not believe that there is a need for radical changes or adoption of a playoff system.

Harvey Perlman, chancellor of the University of Nebraska, said the championship system is the fairest way to determine a national champion and provides adequate opportunity for schools outside the BCS to play their way into contention by winning their regular season games.

A team ranked in the top 12 according to the BCS scale is eligible for consideration, and a team in the top six automatically gets a spot.

And Keith Tribble, chairman of the Football Bowl Association and chief executive officer of the Orange Bowl Committee, said the bowl games are attracting more fans, benefiting their host communities and generating more money than ever, paying out $800 million in the last five years.

"For the past 90 years, bowl games have been the heart and soul of college football. It has never been healthier," said Tribble.

Scott Cowen, president of the University of Tulane, disagrees. In 1998, the Green Wave went through the season undefeated, but was shut out of the top-tier BCS bowl games. A year later, the same thing happened to the Marshall Thundering Herd.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the current system is unjust and unjustifiable," said Cowen, who also heads a coalition of more than 50 schools that are not part of the BCS.

This year, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs are 8-0. But like their Cinderella predecessors, the Horned Frogs could ultimately be shut out of the top four bowl games.

And the bowl payouts have gone overwhelmingly to the BCS schools, Cowen said. Since 1998, the 63 BCS schools have received $450 million compared to just $17 million for the other 54 universities.

Cowen's group is scheduled to meet with the presidents of the conferences in the BCS system on Nov. 16 to discuss potential changes to the BCS.

"If they are allowed to continue that kind of monopoly, they will suffer the same fate of any other monopoly in the country. They will become bloated, inefficient ... and eventually kill the golden goose," said Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah.

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.