Enjoy Your Imaginary Championship Game, Texas and Alabama

You can use this post as an open thread for tonight's Alabama-Texas game, which means it's the perfect place for trash talk, yelling at people on TV, or composing angry rants against the BCS. Here...let me help you with that!

It's been said a million times before, but since this may be the last chance to do so for awhile I'll go ahead and say it again: The BCS is a joke and their finger-in-the-ears PR campaign to convince people that it's simply not possible to devise a better system so we shouldn't even try is infuriating. They actually proffered up a serious argument today that says if teams were "forced" to play in a playoff as opposed to a bowl game, then the players would miss the opportunity to car pool to the bowl sites, claim multiple mileage reimbursements for a trip that they shared, and then pocket the difference. I'm paralyzed under of the weight of the integrity.

None of the BCS's defenses hold up to any rational analysis. I don't care what Chris Peterson or Gary Patterson say—their teams got screwed. But it's not even about them. It's about a sport that doesn't feel it is necessary for its champion to take on all comers. A league that actively discourages competition between its members. Can you imagine? Play fewer games! Don't challenge yourself against the best you can! Never create an occasion to which you might have to rise. If that's your attitude, then why even bother to keep score?

Alabama is the best team in college football and I will be shocked if they lose tonight—and yes, I will still watch the game and (hopefully) enjoy it—but a sport that allows nearly a third of its teams to finish the season with a meaningless exhibition win is not much of a sport at all. It's anti-sport. The stubbornness of the universities and businessmen that hold the purse strings is an affront to the "amateur" athletes they swear they're protecting. They can all go suck an orange bowl.

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And on that note ... have fun everybody! Again, this is your open thread, but Barry P. will be here later to explain any of Brent Musburger's down home expressionism should his meaning elude you.

Too bad about #Conan, huh?