Sorry system sours Bobcats football success

There's no denying that it has been a very good season for the Ohio Bobcats football team. 

Nine wins, a MAC East title, and a shot at winning its first ever MAC Championship game.

There’s no taking away from those already achieved accomplishments and the possibility of an 11-win season. 

The players should be excited and proud of what they have done on the field.

But that doesn’t mean fans should also be blindly excited or thrilled with the lackluster end point of an otherwise excellent season.

Ohio will be heading to a bowl game no matter the result against Northern Illinois. A win and it’s off to Mobile, Alabama for the GMAC Bowl. A loss and it’s a trip to Boise and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

Yes, seriously. One of the program’s best seasons ever is going to culminate with a date against the winner of the Sun Belt or 6-5 Utah State.

Even more idiotic is that two of the MAC’s three automatic bowl tie-ins are nowhere close to the conference’s footprint. Trips to Idaho or Alabama are not realistic for MAC fans or students. It doesn’t make sense for bowls trying to sell tickets or fans that want to support their team.

Instead of being all mushy gushy about the potential of these wonderful firsts, a season like no other, let’s realize the plight of being a nobody in college football.

If you don’t reside in a BCS automatic qualifying conference you are a nobody in college football. You’re not even allowed to step foot on Wall Street, let alone be a part of it.

The bowl system is in essence a caste system. The supposed low of the low are matched up with each other with no opportunity to prove that a 9 or 10-victory Ohio team is better than 6-win Ohio State. One chosen one gets lucky enough to be anointed the best of the lesser powers and play in a BCS game. That’s it. We’re supposed to be happy with that and move on. 

It shouldn’t be that way. No fan should be told to revel in a team they root for, who may win its conference championship, going to a glorified exhibition thousands of miles away against another mid-major.

Even the worst conference winner in college basketball, from the lowliest conference, gets a chance to prove itself, to have a moment to shine and be a lovable David slaying a Goliath.

Nobody vs. nobody equals no fun. Because at least playing a BCS program, even a bottom of the barrel one, earns some respect.

Winning six games, going .500, is not much of an accomplishment, BCS conference or not. So my proposition is if you win six games and still want to go to a bowl game you don’t get to play another big name from a BCS conference on New Year’s Day (as Florida and Ohio State are projected to in the Gator Bowl).

You play a top team from a non-BCS conference. Florida goes to Mobile and can battle with the Sun Belt champion Arkansas State. Ohio State can head to Detroit and face the MAC champion. That would be fair. 

But fair doesn’t happen in this sport. Instead UCLA, which just lost by 50 and fired its head coach, will take the spot of one of the pushed around nobodies, a seven or eight win team from the MAC, MWC or Sun Belt.

I’ll be happy if Ohio wins its first conference title since 1968 tomorrow night. I’ll root for them in whatever bowl game they end up playing.

But I will not pretend that settling for and enjoying the spoils of inferiority in a flawed system is acceptable.