New York ? Where the Bowl Championship Series goes from here remains to be seen — but it definitely is not going away.

“We’re not heading toward a playoff,” Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said.

The Associated Press has told the BCS to stop using its poll to determine which teams play for a national title.

The BCS appears to be willing to move on without the AP poll. Coordinator and Big 12 Conference commissioner Kevin Weiberg has said the BCS hopes to have a new formula ready by April.

So, for the second straight season and the fifth time since the system was implemented in 1998, the BCS will be changing the way it computes its standings.

“I wasn’t surprised by the AP’s decision,” Tranghese said. “I don’t think it’s a negative issue. We’re just going to have to put our heads together and come up with an alternative way of picking the teams for the 1-2 game.”

This season, the BCS streamlined its formula and put heavy emphasis on the AP and ESPN/USA Today coaches polls. The goal was to make it more likely that Nos. 1 and 2 in the polls played in the national title game, unlike last season when Southern California was a consensus No. 1 but left out of the BCS championship. Without the AP poll, the BCS’s current formula is left with the coaches poll and six computer rankings.

The BCS could stick with those two and change the weighting system. Or it could add more computers. Or maybe it could even revive the strength-of-schedule component, which was eliminated because it was deemed redundant.

“We certainly have other options on how to select and rank the teams,” Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said.

The BCS already was looking at the possibility of a selection committee picking the teams for the championship game, taking a page from the NCAA basketball tournaments. But a committee probably wouldn’t be the best way to fill the two at-large spots.

And starting with the 2006 season, the number of at-large teams is destined to go up as the BCS expands to five games to allow greater access to teams from outside the six conferences that now have automatic entry.

“Adding the fifth game is going to give us less pressure,” Hansen said. “One of the problems has been good teams being left out. With one more game, that’s less likely to happen.”

The original BCS formula was comprised of an average of the two human polls, an average of three computer rankings, total losses and strength of schedule.

Since then the computers rankings have changed in number and name, and other elements have come and gone. The polls have been a constant.

The coaches poll is not likely to follow the AP’s path.

“We went into it with a specific reason,” said Grant Teaff, the president of the American Football Coaches Assn., which oversees the poll. “When the concept came up to have two teams play for a national championship it fit with the coaches’ desires. We have the BCS, which is far from perfect, but it has provided by and large what the coaches want.

“We’ll be a part of it if we are asked to be a part of it.”

The AP’s move is not without precedent.

The New York Times pulled its computer rankings out of the BCS this year because the newspaper felt it was a conflict of interest.

The AP said in a statement that the BCS’s unauthorized use of its poll had “harmed AP’s reputation and interfered with AP’s agreements with AP poll voters.”