To see just how absurd Division 1-Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division 1-A) football’s process of picking a “National Champion” is, imagine if this year for the college basketball season, the NCAA decided to scrap the tournament system in favor of the Bowl Championship Series.

Instead of 65 teams battling their way to the Final Four, the teams with the best regular season records would fill the top slots and compete in games — one exhibition game each — to conclude their seasons.

Kansas, North Carolina, UCLA and Georgetown all have great seasons and, rather than having to prove themselves in a tournament, automatically get red carpet treatment and a spot in a “BCS bowl game.” Forget about the winner of each game competing for a national championship. There will only be exhibition bowl games this year.

Sorry, Gonzaga, your tournament efforts have been admirable the past several years but you play in a mid-major conference, a significant step down in status from the Atlantic Coastal Conference, Southeastern Conference or Big 12 Conference. Instead of getting a chance to play your way to the top in the tournament, we’re going to send you to an exhibition game against Iowa in Detroit and call it the Motor City Bowl.

If, and only if, you manage to go undefeated, you might sneak your way into a Bowl Championship Series game against a big team from a real basketball conference. George Mason and Wichita State, you get the same treatment. There will be no need for you to get your hopes up and play your way to the Elite Eight or Final Four because you will get bowl games too.

Forget that the tournament is the only way to prove a real winner. We’re going to switch to this BCS formula. Only the elite teams from marquee conferences get a real shot at a top bowl game because it’s the best way to find out who the champion is.

For fans who fill out brackets every year to predict who will make it to the Final Four, there will be no need for this because there will be 32 bowl games to replace the confusing tournament system.

At the end of the season, there will be controversy over which teams should have played in the “National Title game,” which will make much more sense than letting the best teams in the country battle for the championship in a tournament.

Now, to prove why this is going to be the best move for college basketball, we’ll look at Division 1- FBS college football to show the strength of having exhibition games, labeled as bowls, instead of a tournament.

Almost every season, there are two to three teams from respected conferences at the end of the year with undefeated records that fill the two spots in the “National Title Game.” There are several other teams with a loss or two who, if not for their loss, would be a contender for the championship match-up.

The rest of the teams in college football that have few losses on their record can forget about competing in a tournament for the national title, and instead get a chance to play in an exhibition match.

Sorry, Florida State, you lost three games and will be sentenced to play in the MPC Computers Bowl, formerly known as the Humanitarian Bowl. Ever been to Boise, Idaho in late December? I heard it’s nice, and apparently they have this blue football field, which is really cool. It’s often mistaken by birds as a lake where they can land.

To decide who gets to play in the greatest exhibition game in all of college football, a series of highly subjective polls are used to determine the No. 1 and No. 2 teams. As for the other teams, the best of the rest from the power football conferences are placed in BCS exhibition matches. There are four BCS games with cute names like “Sugar Bowl,” “Rose Bowl,” “Fiesta Bowl” and “Orange Bowl.” Every once in awhile, if a team from a mid-major conference goes undefeated like Boise State did last year, they might gain enough popularity to play in a BCS game.

Looking back on the Appalachian State and Michigan match-up last weekend, it appears that Michigan likely lost any chance of playing in the “national title game” this year.

Michigan’s subjective No. 5 ranking in both the AP Poll and USA Today Poll is an embarrassment for the people who voted them to be the fifth best team in the country. Because the Wolverines play in the FBS, they do not have to win any sort of tournament at the end of the season to show their worth on the field.

Appalachian State, on the other hand, had nothing to lose coming into Ann Arbor, Mich., since its division (FCS, formerly Division 1-AA) actually has a tournament at the end of the season to determine who the best team is. Maybe Michigan was caught off-guard and did not expect Appalachian State to put up a fight.

Or it could have been because Appalachian State knew how to play in high-stakes games and win, just as they did the previous two years in their division championship tournaments.

In the wake of Appalachian State’s victory comes the age-old question: Why on earth does FBS college football not have a tournament to decide the best team in the country?

In what was supposed to be an easy game for Michigan, it turned out to be an embarrassment for the Wolverine’s football program and FBS football as a sport.

Michigan, who was supposed to play No. 23 Hawaii, opted for an “easy” game instead and offered Appalachian State $400,000 to come all the way from Boone, N.C., to Ann Arbor, Mich., and then to let Michigan stomp them into the ground. Unfortunately for Michigan, Appalachian State did not get the memo on the whole losing part and left Michigan’s Big House with a fat check and 110,000 unsatisfied Wolverine fans.

Some people may point out that Appalachian State is the two-time defending National Champion in FCS football, but the fact that it is an FCS team leaves no excuse for the No. 5 team in the nation to lose the game.

The upset hurt the validity of the college football rankings. If Michigan can’t beat a team that it paid to come to its stadium, then who knows who the best teams in the country are? Had the Wolverines won, they would be one game closer to working their way towards winning the Big Ten Conference and maybe a national championship.

In FBS football, each year there is a controversy over who plays in the “national title game.” The actual process of deciding who will play for the national championship, the infamous BCS rankings, is determined by a number of subjective polls including the USA Today Coaches’ Poll, the Harris Interactive Poll and six BCS computer rankings.

So basically, the two teams that play for the “National Championship” are decided by a popularity contest and computers. Instead, they should be decided by a tournament.

The two highest ranked BCS teams play a game against each other, bypassing the traditional sports idea of a tournament, and the winner is crowned the “National Champion.”

How does the Appalachian State and Michigan game tie into the whole BCS process? Michigan was looking for the easiest route to the national championship and figured Appalachian State would be an easy game early in its season that it could use as a tune-up for the rest of its season.

If a team like Appalachian State can beat one of the most respected football programs in the country, then it should have a chance to play in a season-ending tournament against such marquee teams where its wins could be rewarded by a championship, not just praises of “upsetting” those teams. Appalachian State could be the “George Mason” of college football, but no one will ever know as long as the BCS, not a tournament, determines the nation’s best team.

Kansan sports columnist Bryan Wheeler can be reached at bwheeler@kansan.com