Q. They believe in letting the coaches, sportswriters and anyone else having legitimate second-opinion guesstimating powers select who they think is the nation's No. 1 football team. And, you know, no one agrees. Why not just pair up Washington and Miami and let them go at it in a postseason game?

Vernon Thaxton

Baltimore

A. On this question, we needed to call in a great thinker. One was not available, so we settled for Sun columnist Mike Littwin. Here's what he had to say:

"If issues were that easy to answer, we wouldn't need a 'Did You Ever Wonder Why?' feature. And, in these times, we don't want to put anybody out of work.

"But seriously, folks, maybe, just maybe, the actual athletes ought to get some time to try to be actual students."

Other arguments against an actual national championship game Littwin was far too busy to list them -- include the decrease in importance of the New Year's bowl games and the interest in college football derived from discussion over who really is No. 1.