What is up with all the props we are throwing at conference champions as it relates to the BCS? To listen to the pigskinati, second in the conference is akin to sports leprosy. Surely a national championship game is best played between a couple undefeateds, but one of the arguments against Michigan not going to Glendale for all the marbles was that it had not won its conference. So the Wolverines in second pale next to a conference champ who might have three or four losses?

Yet, we have embraced the wild card concept in nearly all the major professional sports playoff formats. I was against a Wolverine/Ohio State rematch for other reasons but ease up on the conference champion nonsense. In 1971 the nation’s three top college football teams came from one conference — the Big Eight. In the mid-1970s Indiana and Michigan played in the title game for the NCAA basketball championship. Georgetown and Villanova from the Big East repeated the feat in 1984. There have been others. The Republic survived.