Big Game will be a big game, so everyone should go out and watch Stanford football beat down those Kal weenies. If we win, it will be a very big deal.

There, my two sentences about this week’s Big Game. I would have written the obligatory column about our matchup against the Dirty Bears, but my fellow columnists have already spelled out pretty much everything you need to know.

Instead, it’s time for the anti-BCS rant that has been stuck in my head for the past couple of weeks. A lot of these types of arguments have been bandied about, including how the BCS is a cartel and how it stiffs the little guy and makes college football unfair. While I have a lot of contentions with the BCS itself, the organization with which I really have a bone to pick is the esteemed Southeastern Conference, or the SEC.

Let me start by saying that I have a great deal of respect for the SEC. It has some of the nation’s most successful and respected programs, has won numerous national championships (including the last four BCS titles) and has large, passionate fan bases that pack stadiums every Saturday.

Nevertheless, the SEC epitomizes the “old boys network” that keeps non-automatic qualifier (non-AQ) schools like Boise State and TCU out of the national championship picture and smaller schools like Stanford from being serious contenders for at-large BCS berths. All of the criticisms about the Broncos and the Horned Frogs—that they don’t play tough schedules and couldn’t beat an AQ-conference champion on a neutral field—have some of their loudest proponents inside the SEC.

First of all, I find both of these arguments to have questionable validity at best. Admittedly, it’s probably true that a slate of SEC opponents is tougher than Boise State’s WAC conference schedule, but I’m sure the Broncos would jump at the chance to play through, say, a Pac-10 season (not that they’re ever going to get that chance).

It’s also impossible to say that they “couldn’t” beat the SEC champion: If we knew who was going to win in any hypothetical scenario, why bother playing the games at all? Utah also buried Alabama in the Sugar Bowl at the end of the 2008 season, and since SEC memories clearly stretch back to that run of four national titles, I’m sure the conference remembers that contest.

The SEC as a whole has also figured out how best to “game” the BCS system: play an eight-game conference schedule and beat up on four nonconference patsies. Under the current bowl system, playing tough teams out of conference is a losing proposition: you get little to no reward for winning them, but losing can knock you out of the national title discussion. Similarly, there’s no reward for playing a ninth conference game, as both the Pac-10 and Big Ten are planning to do when those conferences expand to 12 schools.

I’m sure Boise State and TCU would gladly take the opportunity to play one of the SEC’s marquee programs in their out-of-conference schedules, but no SEC team will ever schedule either school because the downsides of losing far outweigh the rewards for winning. I want the SEC to put its money where its mouth is: if these teams are so bad and play such weak schedules, why don’t you just put them on your out-of-conference slate?

To illustrate the curious phenomenon that is SEC scheduling, let’s take a look at its West Division champion and current national-title contender, Auburn. The Tigers play eight SEC foes (not counting their rematch with South Carolina in the conference title game) and four nonconference opponents—Arkansas State and Louisiana-Monroe from the Sun Belt Conference, FCS Chattanooga and Clemson from the ACC. Even Clemson, Auburn’s only non-conference BCS opponent, plays in one of the weaker AQ conferences, and has only compiled a 5-5 overall record and a 3-4 record in the ACC so far this season.

Auburn doesn’t get punished in the polls for playing extremely weak out-of-conference opponents (witness its current No. 2 ranking), but its conference simultaneously rails against the non-AQs for failing to play adequately difficult (read: SEC-level) foes.

Cautionary tales also exist of teams who schedule tough non-AQs and get punished for it—the best example this year is Oregon State, who scheduled both Boise and TCU. As one might have expected, the Beavers lost to both teams, knocking them out of the rankings. Oregon State is currently 4-5 overall and is looking at a tough road to gain bowl eligibility—had they followed the SEC model and scheduled Louisiana-Monroe and Portland State, the Beavers would likely already be bowl eligible with a 6-3 record.

The SEC needs to put up or shut up: either schedule the non-AQ powers during the regular season or pipe down about how soft they are. Unfortunately for the football-loving public, we’re not likely to see these matchups any time soon, since the BCS Grand Poohbahs have decided that it’s perfectly okay for an SEC team to play a bunch of weak opponents and get rewarded for it, but a team from Boise, Idaho can’t do the same thing and expect to get away with it.

Kabir Sawhney just used 3,497 acronyms in one column. Voice your confusion at ksawhney “at” stanford.edu.