reasons 14 and 13

Both reasons, really, can be summed up in three simple letters.

BCS.

Kansas Football unbelievably reached the elite of the elite two years ago, with a thrilling 11-1 regular season and a jaw-dropping, program-establishing victory in the Orange Bowl over ACC Champion Virginia Tech.

I figure KU has a one in three shot of playing for its second BCS berth in three years come the first Saturday in December. Provided KU and MU take care of Nebraska at home (as they've done every time since Solich was fired six years ago), I think whoever wins the showdown at Arrowhead, wins the North. And the winner of the North is only 60 minutes away from being in a bowl featuring those three magical letters.

Reason 14 is the BCS. Love it (like I do, just keep reading ...) or hate it, its here to stay. Appear in it, and your program is instantly legitimized. Appear more than once, and you're a national power. Missouri has the opportunity this year to attain the former. Kansas has the opportunity to attain the latter. Awesome.

Reason 13 is also related to the BCS. Its the fact that in college football, the regular season isn't a joke, it isn't a warm-up to two months of playoffs. Every week IS a playoff! Its a 14 week, 12 game playoff marathon, where you can't afford even one loss! How can you NOT love this sport?

Entering this season, I'd say there are 30 legitimate contenders for a BCS bowl and a berth in the National Championship Game (some obviously more far fetched than others to reach Pasadena on January 8th):

ACC: Virginia Tech, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Florida State.
Big East: West Virginia, Rutgers, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh.
Big 10 (plus one): Penn State, Ohio State, Iowa.
Big XII: Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska.
Pac 10: USC, Cal, Oregon.
SEC: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss.
Others: Utah, BYU, TCU, Boise State.

In every other sport, the first couple weeks are all about building optimism for the coming season (or confirming your worst fears). But not college football. Just consider the showdowns between these 30 teams above in the month of September alone:

Week 1 (Sept 3-7): Oregon at Boise State; Georgia at Oklahoma State; BYU vs Oklahoma in Dallas; Alabama vs Virginia Tech in Atlanta; Cincinnati at Rutgers.

After week one, the list of 30 is cut by 5. 5 of the 30 national title contenders will suffer a critical blow to their title hopes in the first week of the season. In NO other sport can you say that.

And this doesn't even account for the potential upsets. Wake opens with Vanderbilt, a bowl team from last year. MU has to deal with its rival Illinois in St. Louis. Florida State and Miami throw down Labor Day night. And LSU has a tricky, testy, upset-alert trip to Seattle to face a bad-yet-still-formidable Washington team. You conceivably could have nearly 1/3 of the championship contending field already saddled with a loss BEFORE the NFL even kicks off!

Week two isn't as crazy, but contains arguably the non-conference Game of the Year:

Week 2 (Sept 10-12): USC at Ohio State.

Two weeks in, and six championship contenders will be behind the eight ball. Awesome. Week 3 gets wacky again, with some awesome matchups, and some HUGE upset alerts that I'll include as well:

Week 3 (Sept 17-19): Georgia Tech at Miami; Boise State at Fresno State; Duke at Kansas; Nebraska at Virginia Tech; Utah at Oregon; Arizona at Iowa; Cincinnati at Oregon State; Florida State at BYU; West Virginia at Auburn; Georgia at Arkansas; Texas Tech at Texas.

If I wasn't going to be in Lawrence for the first part of the day, I doubt I'd leave the couch, except to pee or grab another beer. Are you kidding me? Its only week 3! And already you've got loaded games all over the board, upset potential everywhere, and the very realistic possibility that we'll enter conference play with nearly HALF the preseason top 30 saddled with at least one loss! I love this sport!

NONE of this is possible without the BCS. None of it. Prior to the BCS, there was no National Championship Game, unless you lucked out and had two conferences locked into a bowl arrangement luckily ranked one-two. In the 12 years prior to the BCS beginning (1995), you had a true 1 v 2 matchup only 3 times:

1987 Fiesta Bowl: 2 Penn State beat 1 Miami.
1992 Sugar Bowl: 2 Alabama beat 1 Miami.
1993 Orange Bowl: 1 Florida State beat 2 Nebraska.

Since the BCS, only once have you not had 1 v 2, in 1997, prior to the Rose Bowl joining the BCS. Instead of an undefeated Michigan squad battling an unbeaten Nebraska team, you had a co-national champion scenario, as Nebraska crushed Tennesee in the Orange Bowl, and Michigan struggled but beat Washington State in the Rose Bowl. Every year since then, its been 1 v 2, with only one split title. Because of the BCS. And a lot of them have been classics:

1998: Tennesee beats Florida State on a late Jamal Lewis TD run.
1999: Michael Vick introduces himself to America, as Virginia Tech nearly upsets Florida State.
2000: Oklahoma returns to prominence by shutting down Florida State.
2001: Nebraska's fall from the top officially begins, as Miami destroys them in the Rose Bowl.
2002: Ohio State beats Miami in overtime.
2003: USC destroys Michigan; LSU struggles but beats OU in the only split title of the decade.
2004: USC pounds OU in the Orange Bowl, as unbeaten Auburn is screwed.
2005: as good as it gets. Texas 39, USC 37, in arguably the greatest college game ever played.
2006: Florida destroys unbeaten, unchallenged Ohio State, and the Big 10 (plus one)'s fall from prominence begins.
2007: Upsets galore (3 straight number ones fell in the last three weeks of the season) create a LSU / OU national title game. It didn't disappoint.
2008: Florida beats OU in an awesome defensive struggle.

Not a single BCS title game has disappointed. At least to me. And the other BCS bowls have generally been decent as well, if overshadowed. Without the BCS, Boise State never gets to pull a hook-and-ladder to pull within one, and then run a Statue of Liberty to beat OU by one in the Fiesta Bowl. Utah doesn't go 2 for 2, destroying an average Pitt team and humiliating an Alabama team that finished the regular season undefeated.

Reason 13 is the awe, the love, the sheer joy, I feel about college football's regular season. We don't need a playoff. We already have one! Every damned Saturday. So get to your closest venue and enjoy it! God knows I intend to seven times this season (eight if I go to KSU / ISU at Arrowhead to be an honorary Cyclone for a day ...)