The latest case against BCS system comes from the basketball court

No one outside of their locker room can say for sure weather or not players from Butler University's men's basketball team took the court at the beginning of the season with national title hopes on their minds.

But the one thing that is clear is they took the court with the chance of playing for a national title at the end of the season. A chance they took advantage of Saturday with a 52-50 victory over Michigan State, earning the right to face Duke for the championship Monday.

It's a chance every Division I NCAA basketball team had at a shot at on the first day of practice. It's a chance that was still a possibility for many teams as they headed into the conference tournament, no matter how rough the season was.

It's that chance that separates postseason basketball play from postseason football action. Make no mistake about it, college football is the king of college sports, but March Madness is the jewel of postseason play. March Madness beats the BCS system any day.

The formula is simple: 65 teams. Three weeks of play. Upsets. Last second, game-winning shots. New stars emerge, others go home early. Fill out a bracket and cheer for teams no one's ever heard of. Throw away busted bracket and root for the lowest seed playing.

Everyone knows how the story ends: one team cuts down the net, the other cries in the locker room.

Six rounds of play determine a national champion, an unquestionable champion because all worthy contenders were invited to the dance. Every conference was represented. Every team in the country opened the season with an equal chance to be the last team standing.

That isn't the case in college football, where only teams from the BCS conferences have any real hopes of playing for the national title. There are 119 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision teams that play in 11 conferences, 66 of those teams, and Notre Dame, play in the six Bowl Champion Series conferences with automatic qualifiers to BCS games, including the national title game.

That means only 67 of 119 teams have a chance to play for the national title at the beginning of the season. Throw in the importance of the preseason top 25 polls and only 35 teams max have any real chance of playing for the national title at the end of the season.

On the very first day of the season, almost half the teams are eliminated from the national title picture.

Imagine if this were the case for other sports. Imagine if it was announced only teams from the West could play for the NBA title this year. Or if only teams from the AFC could play in the Super Bowl, sorry NFC teams.

This wouldn't fly, and fans would be outraged. Fans of college football should be outraged too over the BCS system. The BCS system ensures there are no Butlers in college football, no little guys from no-name schools beating power houses. No Northern Iowa's sending top-seeded Kansas home.

Sure, games like Boise State and Oklahoma do occur, but they are the exception to the rule and a series of events have to occur for teams like Boise State just to have a chance to get there, and most of them are outside of BSU's control.

Basketball teams, including tiny schools such as Saint Mary's, control their own fate: win and live another day, or lose and get on the plane.

And no matter how great the 2007 Fiesta Bowl game was, imagine if after taking down the Sooners in overtime if the Broncos would have a chance to play Florida next and then Ohio State for the championship.

Would they have won? The answer doesn't matter, what does matter is they should have been given a fair chance to prove if they were the best in the country or not that year. Every team should be given that chance.

Imagine if the drama and excitement of the Fiesta Bowl game were possible every year, and all 119 teams had an equal chance of playing the villain or underdog.

Every team in the country would have an equal chance to win the national championship.

The same chance Butler has Monday night.