For those who found the Bowl Championship Series formula far too simple, straight forward and accurate, the International Skating Union gives you its new proposed scoring system.

	Pairs gold medalists Jamie Sale, left, Elena Berezhnaya, David Pelletier and Anton Sikharulidze made fun of the situation in the figure skating exhibition.

Still publicly wincing from the pairs skating scandal in Salt Lake (while privately laughing over increased ratings), the ISU approved a new scoring system this week. Although approved by an 81-16 vote, the new system won't be implemented for at least two years and perhaps never. Which is about par for the course in figure skating.

The proposal is complicated but basically it would replace the 6.0 mark with an involved points system where every element has a set value. A three-digit score would replace the perfect 6.0 with the new system, which would be similar to those used in diving and snowboarding. And really, shouldn't all sports be looking to snowboarding for leadership?

"It is not possible to maintain a system of judging created decades ago to govern a sport that is no longer comparable with today's standards of skating,'' said the ISU president, the improbably named Ottavio Cinquanta.

You have to feel for Cinquanta. His background is in speedskating where determining the winner is a simpler process. Whoever crosses the finish line first wins. Pretty easy.

Figure skating is a little more complicated. So much so that every competition has at least one scoring controversy. So much so that Cinquanta wound up cleaning up the mess in front of the world's media during the Olympics pairs competition.

In case you forget, that was when the French judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, said she was "pressured to vote a certain way'' when she scored the Russian couple, Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze, over the Canadian pair, Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. Le Gougne later claimed she didn't buckle under the pressure but naturally, because she was French, no one believed that was possible. Eventually, the Canadians received a gold medal of their own and Le Gougne had pretty much been accused of everything up to collaborating in the Vichy government and fixing the recent French elections.

Cinquanta promised in Salt Lake that the ISU would seek scoring reforms and this is the result. At least for now. The United States and Australia also have proposals on the table, as well, and all the reforms will be debated and amended before a final plan is chosen. No matter which plan they eventually enact though, none will alter one fundamental, unavoidable fact: Figure skating is a subjective sport.

There isn't much you can do about that. Nor should you. The controversy over scoring provides much of the sport's appeal. Much of the excitement is sitting and watching the skaters squirm in the Kiss and Cry zone. Much of the fun is waiting to see whether the judges agreed with you or whether they cheated your favorite skater. The next best thing to watching your skater win is getting to bitch about your skater getting hosed by the judges.

The pairs competition last February is all the evidence you need of that. No one ever pays much attention to the pairs competition but because of the scoring controversy, the Canadians were ready to overrun the French embassy (even more than normal) while everyone else was discussing the scoring as passionately as Dick Button.

Obviously, skating needs to make sure its judges are impartial and that the competition is completely above-board. But in trying to guarantee that, the ISU is going about this all backwards and ignoring the real problem. Cinquanta is wrong. You don't need to change a decades old scoring system and replace it with a bulky, complicated one. You just need to get rid of the judges you know are cheating.

The scoring system isn't to blame. It's the people scoring.

Jim Caple is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at cuffscaple@hotmail.com