I rarely listen to sports talk radio, though I go on it quite a bit. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, it’s just that I don’t find the time to tune in as much as I would like.

Anyway, I heard someone on the radio this morning while heading out to my day job. I think it was Colin Cowherd, who from my experience has usually been pretty good.

But he said something today that was waaaay off base.

In discussing the BCS, he lamented how the Big 12 and SEC must play a conference title game while the Pac-10 and Big Ten get off scott free (I guess the ACC and Big East don’t count). The implication being that the Pac-10 and the Big Ten therefore have an easier route to the title game. He thought it was a travesty.

Now, first off, let’s be clear: Out of the 24 teams in the SEC and Big 12, only four will play that extra game. Since there is no prerequisite that a BCS title winner has to be a conference champ, it is entirely plausible that a team that didn’t get to play that extra game could still make the BCS Championship (for instance, Texas can still make it if Texas Tech goes to the Big 12 title game and gets knocked off by Missouri).

One other factor that Cowherd ignores is non-conference and conference scheduling. This applies particularly to the Pac-10. While the Pac-10 does not have a conference championship game, it does play a round robin schedule and does consistently play a tougher out-of-conference schedule than the SEC or Big 12. Every year, the nation’s toughest schedules come from the Pac-10.

So, the schedule more than balances out, with the only exception, perhaps, being a year like this one when the Pac-10 is particularly down and the Big 12 and SEC are particularly up.

But, in general, the Pac-10 (and sometimes the Big Ten) more than makes up for not having a title game. Besides, no one forced the Big 12 and SEC to put together those title games–they were merely another way for the conferences to grab more money. Those conferences felt it was worth the risk, so it’s on them.

Besides, if Texas Tech had to play, say, Kansas one more time, would that really be an imposition?