“Once again, Pac-10 matters little in national title picture,” CBS Sportsline declares in a headline. The article elaborates:

The conference is effectively out of the national championship race and back to its old ways. Shootouts, fluid standings from one year to the next. The league that sent two teams to BCS bowls for the first time in 2002 looks in dire straits, thanks to some wonderful upsets.

And you know what? They may be right. The conference may indeed have shot itself in the foot once again, by being so damn interesting. But if so, it isn’t an indictment of the Pac-10 — it’s an indictment of the “camera” that takes the “national title picture,” namely the BCS.

Look, the Pac-10 is a conference that’s competitive and balanced enough that its teams actually compete, and beat each other up on a week-by-week basis. Instead of predictable weekly blowouts by highly ranked teams over lower-tier squads, we get frequent thrillers and upsets. And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?!?

Going undefeated in the regular season should not be a prerequisite for winning a national title. Having a strong regular season, and then going undefeated in the postseason — in a national championship tournament — should be.

But alas, going undefeated in a weak, lopsided conference like the Big East or ACC is enough to land a team in the title game, while going 7-1 in a tough, topsy-turvy conference — as USC did last year, and could well do again this year — gets you nothing but a consolation prize.

As Chris Rock said in Head of State, “that ain’t right.”