SALT LAKE CITY -- Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Tuesday he is launching an investigation into the Bowl Championship Series for a possible violation of federal antitrust laws after an undefeated Utah team was left out of the national title game for the second time in five years.

Shurtleff contends the BCS unfairly puts schools like Utah, which is a member of a conference without an automatic bid to a BCS bowl, at a competitive and financial disadvantage.

"We've established that from the very first day, from the very fist kickoff in the college season, more than half of the schools are put on an unlevel playing field," Shurtleff said. "They will never be allowed to play for a national championship."

The BCS strives to pit the two top-ranked teams against each other in a national title game each year. It uses a complicated formula based on human polls and computer rankings to determine who plays in that game, which Shurtleff contends is biased.

The Associated Press crowns its own national champion based on a poll of journalists who are not bound to vote for the winner of the BCS title game. Many fans are clamoring for AP voters to put Utah in the No. 1 spot in the final poll.

On Friday, Utah completed an undefeated season and became the first team from a non-BCS conference to win two BCS bowls after it beat No. 4 Alabama 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl. Its first BCS win came in 2004 in the Fiesta Bowl against Pittsburgh as the Utes completed another undefeated season.

Shurtleff said his office is still in the initial stages of reviewing the Sherman Antitrust Act to see if a lawsuit can be filed. To succeed in a lawsuit, Shurtleff would have to prove a conspiracy exists that creates a monopoly.

He said he would prefer for the BCS and university presidents to solve the problem of excluding certain schools from a national title game themselves by creating a playoff system, but he said he's committed to doing whatever it takes to see changes are made.

However, if a lawsuit is filed against the BCS, Shurtleff could end up suing the state he represents. Utah and Utah State are each members of conferences, the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conference, respectively, that are members of the BCS.

"We have to determine the answer to those questions," Shurtleff said. "You determine who it is you're bringing action against."

The BCS is comprised of the 11 Football Championship Subdivision conferences, the director of athletics at the University of Notre Dame, and representatives of the bowl organizations.

Under the BCS, about $9.5 million is distributed among Conference USA, the Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic conferences for being willing to make their teams available to play in BCS games.

If a school from any of those conferences is invited to play in a BCS bowl or championship game, those conferences get an extra 9 percent of BCS revenues among them, which come from television rights and the bowls themselves.

If more than one school from those conferences make the BCS bowls or championship game, those conferences get an extra $4.5 million for each additional team.

By comparison, the share to each conference with an annual automatic berth in the BCS -- the ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and SEC -- is about $18 million each. When a second team from one of those conferences qualifies to play in a BCS game, as the SEC accomplished this year with Alabama and Florida, that conference gets an additional $4.5 million.

"It's not about bragging rights. It's a multimillion dollar, hundreds of millions business where the BCS schools get richer and non-BCS get poorer," said Shurtleff, whose planned investigation was reported by the Deseret News Tuesday in a copyrighted story.

On the Net: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff: attorneygeneral.utah.gov/my--mission.html Bowl Championship Series: www.bcsfootball.org