The best conferences in the sport are packed with potential champions, and even though there is no organized post-season bracket, it doesn’t mean the regular season can’t serve as a form of a week to week ‘win or go home’ from national title contention. The best of the best are so head and shoulders above the rest that the regular season clashes between the uber-dominant can be viewed as a playoff system. Try it, you’ll like it.

Teams like LSU and Alabama are so elite within their own conference that the only possible game they could lose during the regular season is the one in which they face off against each other. This in itself makes this Saturday’s clash the first round of the de facto (there’s that word again) playoff system. To say the winner of this contest is in the driver’s seat for the national championship game would be an understatement. It’s almost down-right guaranteed the winner will be there in the end.

So with all that we know to this point in the college football season, what scenarios are available to decide the possible national championship opponent that will end up facing the LSU/Alabama winner?

Oklahoma State is ranked 3rd in the BCS standings currently behind LSU and Alabama. They tangle this Saturday with the 14th ranked and previously unbeaten Kansas State Wildcats in Stillwater. Most see the Cowboys getting by the ‘Powercats’ at home without much resistance, but the real test for Okie State will be the annual Bedlam game on the final week of the regular season versus Oklahoma. If OSU gets by KSU, the Bedlam Game will undoubtedly serve as another de facto (and again!) playoff game.

If the ‘Pokes win the penultimate face-off with their in-state rival, they will get their shot at the crystal ball against the LSU/Alabama winner. However, what if the Sooners play spoiler and ruin Okie State’s run to the title game? This would be more than just possible, maybe even probable, due to Oklahoma’s big-game experience advantage over the up-and-coming Cowboys. If Boomer Sooner gets over, who then would be next down the totem pole to step into the National Championship game?

If Oklahoma State loses and 4th ranked Stanford wins out, they would be the next program to step into the big game versus the Alabama/LSU winner. There is one roadblock however to that possibility. The Cardinal face the 6th ranked Oregon Ducks next weekend, albeit in the friendly confines of the Farm in Palo Alto.

Oregon’s only loss was a kickoff weekend defeat at the hands of the top team in the land, LSU. This game was played at what was considered to be at a neutral site – the Jerry Jones compound in Dallas – but let’s be quite frank, Baton Rouge is a hop, skip and a jump from Dallas when compared to the distance from Eugene, Oregon. This was basically an LSU home game, and if it weren’t for turnovers due to opening night jitters, the Ducks might have very well knocked off LSU.

Oregon is no slouch and is extremely high powered. Their track-meet style of offense and scoring ability could cause major problems for Andrew Luck and Stanford. So what if Stanford falls at the hands of Oregon and has their national title hopes dashed as well?

If all the series of events described above were to unfold, who would then be next on the list to step into the national championship top-contender role? The simple answer are two words most BCS detractors have wanted to utter in the national championship discussion for quite some time – Boise State.

It would be a very long time coming, as over nearly the past decade the Broncos have had numerous undefeated seasons and has come out victorious when pitted against every big opponent that has been put in front of them. The argument for keeping them out has always been their weak schedule due to them competing in the WAC and Mountain West conferences. A valid point, however Boise has done everything possible in its power to schedule the very toughest of out of conference road trips. In recent years past they have gone on the road in September to both Virginia Tech and Georgia, and both times came away with a victory.

I am of the opinion that if Okie State and Stanford were to both lose and Boise ends up going undefeated, they would undoubtedly deserve a shot at winning it all. The Broncos going undefeated however is no guarantee. Boise has to get by a formidable TCU team a week from this Saturday on the blue turf.

Let’s get crazy. What if Oklahoma State, Stanford and Boise State all lose? You then get into the bizzare world of ‘one-loss’ and might as well let the real mind-boggling begin!

Oregon’s only loss would be to LSU and if LSU beats Alabama, who would want to see an Oregon/LSU rematch? Not many. There is even talk of an LSU/Alabama rematch if there is a garble of one-loss teams in the end. The argument behind that premise is that the loser of this Saturday’s game will have the ‘best loss’ of all one-loss teams.

The only problem with rematches? Where would things stand if the team who lost the first matchup won the second? Yes, they won the “bigger” game, but the fact would still remain that overall, the two teams would end up 1-1 against each other. The vast majority of fans don’t want to see a rematch, they want to see newer and more intriguing matchups in the end.

The day the transparent gestapo of greed that is the BCS finally gets taken down will be a great day, quite possibly the best day in the history of college athletics. But until that time the current unfortunate circumstance can in fact be shoved aside. Forget about the injustice of the BCS and slam that pig back into the trough for the time being.

Go ahead and feel free to appreciate and celebrate the de facto. What did you do as a kid when you wanted the real thing but couldn’t have it? You made the best of it. Instead of getting that motorcycle you wanted but couldn’t have, you simply stuck a playing card in the spokes, remember?

Vroom! Vroom!

What has been spit out the other side? Only the greatest sum of seeds to reach the Final Four. Ever. Before this year, the highest total sum of overall seeds to reach the Final Four was 22 (2000). This season the total is a miraculous and unprecedented 26.

The highest seed remaining in this year’s Final Four are the star-fueled Connecticut Huskies. Kemba Walker is unquestionably the one name still residing that singularly holds the most on his shoulders. His average of 26.8 points, 6.8 assists and only 2.5 turnovers per game in the tournament have been beyond instrumental in Connecticut advancing to its fourth Final Four since 1999 and its third in the past eight seasons.

The Huskies face off against the Kentucky Wildcats in one of the two national semi-final contests. These two teams have a combined total seed of seven. This would conventionally be somewhat of a laughable and unpredicted national semi-final in any other year.

The other semi-final then couldn’t have a total seed of more than three or four right? Try 19. Nineteen.

Considering this, the Connecticut versus Kentucky battle matches the two new favorites to win it all, and could very well be the de-facto national final. Then again, the unpredictable has been the outstanding theme in this year’s tournament, which will make what will be the ‘David versus Goliath’ national final all that much more intriguing.

Last year’s Cinderella, the Butler Bulldogs, return to the now charted waters of the Final Four, yet still are sporting an unlikely 8-seed. They are ironically matched up against this year’s Cinderella, the 11th-seeded VCU Rams.

The only other two occasions an 11th-seeded team reached the Final Four were in 2006, when George Mason University pulled off the feat, and in 1986 when the LSU Tigers achieved the improbable. The fact that this 11-seed anomaly has now occurred twice in the past five years, when it has only happened once before in past decades, speaks to the overall parody being seen in today’s college game.

When asked before their game versus Kansas on Sunday, VCU coach Shaka Smart remarked, “It’s kind of like the movie ‘Dumb and Dumber,”’ setting up a popular line from the gap-toothed dunce played by Jim Carrey. “‘So you’re saying we’ve got a chance?”’

The two most recent 11th-seeded schools to reach the Final Four both hail from the unheralded Colonial Athletic Association. And just as George Mason toppled championship favorite Connecticut to reach the Final Four in 2006, VCU knocked off the last 1-seed standing this season, Kansas.

What may be most unfathomable about VCU reaching the Final Four, is that all the pundits made the selection committee their own personal dartboard on Selection Sunday when VCU was chosen to the field of 68. They spewed ad nauseam over this injustice. For all the shots Eugene Smith, the head of the selection committee took, he must be smiling and snickering now.

Go ahead and eat your crow ‘Dukie-V’ and Jay Bilas. I’m standing table-side with a long, white napkin folded over my forearm, holding a bottle of hot sauce in front of your faces. The ‘yapping catch-phrase clown’ and the ‘smug know-it-all’ ended up with mouths full of excrement in the end, which also puts a smile on my face and leads me to snicker, as well as it should everyone else paying attention.

Shots conceived in hindsight aside, what is ultimately taken from all of this? Talent and the number of ‘recruiting stars’ only goes so far. The team concept: a belief in a system as well as an overall process, now reigns. Take notes coaches and scouts.  Why pursue the hype of the ‘one-and-done’ NBA lottery pick when you can recruit solid pieces that will grow over years in your hardwood garden.

I think it’s safe to say that standard deviation in college basketball is now being tested, which is an exciting occurrence. What has been discovered is that college basketball offers something unique from what the professional game presents. The underdog can actually win in this post-season.  Regularly. Basketball purists should revel in this current status of the amateur circuit.

Despite what unfolds from the madness, one March keynote seems to annually endure – regardless of seed or stature, champions who have earned their place will always remain and will ultimately have their shot to win it all.