It's simple: Win your conference before you play for BCS title

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Here's what's wrong with this Michigan-Ohio State rematch thing:

One team is going to lose.

Troy Smith is planning to take care of business the first time around. (Getty Images)

Which means one team is not going to win the Big Ten title.

But could play for the national championship.

If that bothers anyone else, the e-mails of the commissioners of the six BCS conferences are available upon request. Not that they care. They've had nine years to correct this little oversight.

Why would they? Once they saw Nebraska lose by 26 to Colorado in its final regular-season game in 2001, you could see the wheels turning. The scarred 'Skers didn't even win their own division but played for the national championship.

Hey, they thought, not a bad racket. Why job the conference out of a $4.5 million payday (at-large BCS money) and a shot at the title on a little technicality like winning a six-team division?

They were convinced further in 2003 when Oklahoma lost the Big 12 title game by four touchdowns -- and still played LSU for the BCS title.

Never mind that Colorado got screwed out of a title shot in 2001. Or that LSU still seethes over sharing the '03 title. In the commissioners' big picture, that was a good thing. Because in any given year, Nebraska could be the equivalent of Saturday's loser here.

The only outrage seems to be that for the first time two teams from one conference (Big Ten) would play for the BCS title. It's kind of like Microsoft playing a charity pickup basketball game between corporate execs where all the proceeds go to -- Microsoft.

In this case more than $20 million would roll into Big Ten coffers, plus a guaranteed national championship. Does that bother anyone else? Are Michigan and Ohio State so much better than the rest that they should have a monopoly on the national championship?

Let the BCS computers answer that question. In half of the six, the Big Ten is rated no better than second. It is ranked fourth in the Sagarin Index and the Anderson-Hester computer.

So much for superiority.

Jim Tressel seemed to talk in circles at Monday's presser leading up to the Michigan game. He was asked if he thought a team should have to win its conference to play in the BCS title game.

"Yeah," he said.

Why?

"The thing that we say, if you want a chance to play for the national championship, you'd better make the assumption that you win every game, and be your champion," Tressel said.

That doesn't mean he'd turn down a rematch bid if Michigan beat him Saturday.

"I think it would be fun," Ohio State safety Brandon Mitchell said. "The rivalry is unlike any other."

A Michigan loss, said receiver Anthony Gonzalez, wouldn't mean the season is "a complete failure." Not when the bowl scouts can extend a championship bid two weeks after that loss on Dec. 2.

It's not right that the second-place team in the Big Ten might have a better chance of playing for the national championship than, say, undefeated Rutgers. A better chance than Arkansas, if it won the SEC.

But at No. 7 in the BCS, the Hogs are, historically, a fringe team. That's because no team has ever come from lower than No. 7 in the BCS in November to play for the title. That history would also exclude possible conference champions -- No. 8 West Virginia (8-1), No. 12 Broncos (10-0) and No. 16 Wake Forest (9-1) at this point.

Might as well throw No. 9 Wisconsin in there. If Ohio State loses Saturday, it would fall into a second-place tie with the Badgers (7-1). Michigan beat Wisconsin earlier this season. The Badgers and Buckeyes have not met. Both would have lost to Michigan.

Only one, though, could get a rematch.

The commissioners keep harping that the BCS has created a week-to-week playoff. True, but it also has devalued the conference championship.

In college basketball, conference titles have become like potato chips. You consider them, you consume them, and then they're forgotten.

That's what makes college football different. It's the reason Michigan and Ohio State celebrate all those conference titles.

Only the BCS celebrates second place.