Note:  Most bloggers actually have real jobs.  Sometimes, these real jobs have real meetings during which real blogging is really impossible.  This happens every year around this time.  Apologies; we're back now; god willing and with enough fiber, content will be regular for the foreseeable future.   - B2

So that sucked.  My guess is that, if you're reading this blog, this is probably the first time in your life that you've not seen Michigan play football in December or January.  And that's fine, I guess.  I even managed a genuine smile the first time I got the "what bowl game is Michigan playing in this year?" question from my Uncle, who meant it as harmlessly as possible.  Then it happened again.  Then I got an email asking the same question.  Then I got text messages - all from various parties with different levels of malice intended.  It got to the point where I would be nervously sitting on a couch at a holiday party ready to chuck a handful of mixed nuts at the next person who said anything.

I survived only to see the Big Ten get embarassed in their bowl games, winning one(!) out of the possible seven bowl games in which they played.  That uh, that ain't good.  It's not that I, or any other rational human being, can't take the off season of talking-heads whining about how the Big Ten shouldn't be allowed to play in Division 1, it's rather that the woeful performance will affect the way bowls are selected next year at the very least, and probably in the near future.  That, my friends, is a problem.

I hate the cliche that "perception is reality."  Perception is only reality to idiots who refuse to see a situation for what it really is and determine the reality from that.  Is it possible at this juncture, however, to claim that the BCS is anything other than idiocy?  So now you've got idiots (or at least an idiotic system) running the show, and perception does indeed become reality.  And next year, no matter how good Penn State or Ohio State, or even Iowa really is, you'll see them at the bottom of the barrel because they will be perceived as bad teams. 

And that sucks.  It sucks because SCM texted me during the Penn State/USC drubbing that we're going to see an undefeated Big Ten team get passed over for the National Championship game, and I agreed with him.  It happened this year to Penn State, when they got stuck at the bottom of the one-loss teams, and it will happen next year too.  Look, I'm not typically a rah-rah conference kind of guy, but I am a "do whatever it takes to make Michigan better" kind of guy.  In the realm of things Michigan can't control that would make them better off, the Big Ten getting their act together and winning bowl games is pretty high up there.  Sure, there were moral victories:  Northwestern should have beaten Missouri, and Ohio State played really well against Texas, but next year those will only be losses on a scorechart that idiots use to judge teams.

I know the BCS championship game has become a farce to anyone who has been on the ass-end of a "which team gets to go?" battle.  With the bowl losses piling up for the Big Ten, however, it looks like Big Ten teams - Michigan included - will be on that ass-end for the foreseeable future.