The Big Dance isn't always an open floor

Everything is skewed and tilted and teetered toward the power conferences and, because of it, the state of Utah stands to get mid-major(ly) ripped off.

It's outrageous, it's biased, it's unfair. It may even be a monopoly.

Oh well, that's college . . . basketball.

Utah football went 12-0 last season and didn't get a chance to play for the national title because of a system many have called rigged, un-American and anti-trustworthy.

After Utah got "relegated" to the Sugar Bowl, where it rolled Alabama to finish No. 2 in the final Associated Press poll, the Mountain West Conference went on a crusade to overturn the Bowl Championships Series.

There are bills rumbling through Congress right now trying to abolish the BCS.

And though none of them will succeed, it's the thought that counts.

Meanwhile, in basketball, Utah State recently swept to the Western Athletic Conference regular-season crown. The Aggies enter this week's conference tournament in Reno with 27 wins and a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) power rating in the 20s.

Yet, the Aggies are being told by some bracketologists they must win the WAC tournament to earn an NCAA bid.

The argument is the Aggies simply have not done enough to warrant one of 34 at-large berths. Their strength of schedule ranking of 135 sticks out like the Wasatch. Another problem: all those games and all you've got to show for it is a quality win over Utah?

Of course, when Hawaii's football team came out of the WAC to earn automatic access into a BCS bowl game two years ago, the Warriors had an SOS of 111 out of 119 schools.

But the BCS didn't hold that against Honolulu.

Stick this nugget in your bracket: Utah State could win 29 games and not make the NCAA tournament.

The Aggies' ultimate at-large fate is in the responsible hands of 10 NCAA selection committee members.

Better those hands, no doubt, than voting jokesters in the USA Today coaches' poll.

I called WAC Commissioner Karl Benson on Tuesday to half-jokingly wonder whether he was prepared to sue the NCAA if Utah State, should it fail to win the WAC tournament, gets snubbed of an at-large berth.

Benson is a former NCAA tournament committee member.

Me, I'm a wise guy.

Benson, back in the mid-1990s, led the "little-guy" revolt against upper crust college football and used the threat-of-lawsuit stick to help secure improved BCS bowl access to non-BCS conferences.