You can slice and dice college football many ways - by division, by conference, by the AP and Coaches' Poll standings, by the BCS ratings. But here is a unique idea - a rating based on graduation rates.

Each year the NCAA publishes graduation success rates for all members schools and all sports. http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=38485 The GSRs for the heavyweights of Division I college football are less than impressive. Here are a few examples:

• Florida 68%
• Oklahoma 46%
• Texas 50%
• Southern California 54%
• Alabama 55%
• Ohio State 52%

Not exactly a testimony to academic excellence. Then again GSRs don't figure into the BCS formula.

There exist, however, Division I football programs that aspire to excellence both on the field and in the classroom. Here are the top ten for 2008 in GSRs:

1. Navy 98%
2. Notre Dame 94%
3. Stanford 93%
4. Boston College 92%
5. Duke 92%
6. Northwestern 92%
7. Vanderbilt 91%
8. Air Force 90%
9. Army 87%
10. Wake Forest 83%

Seven of these teams played in bowl games last year. None of these institutions have courses of study comparable to the Leisure or Recreational Studies majors offered at some of the football factories. The players in the top ten GSR schools, then, are scholar-athletes.

So it is time to compare apples to apples. The GSR top ten are not about to foresake their current affiliations to band together in an elite league. But we propose to encourage their commitment to athlete and academic excellence by forming the virtual "Brainiac Conference" and using the Sagarin computer rankings, published each Tuesday in USA Today, to determine the standings in the Conference.

Fortunately, there are a number of Brainiac head-to-head match ups during the season. (Last season two Brianiac schools squared off in a bowl game - Vanderbilt and Boston College in the Music City Bowl.) We encourage the Athletic Directors of these schools to schedule more "conference games" in the future. At the end of the season, we will award the mythical "Summa Cum Laude" Trophy to the top Brainiac team as determined by the final Sagarin rankings.

Watch this blog for weekly standings, conference players of the week, and features on "conference games."