By Jim Litke, AP Sports Columnist

More trash-talking by university presidents could be just what college football needs.

After all, we’ve become immune to their coaches shredding what little of the sport’s credibility remains at the end of each year by shamelessly lobbying for slots in the Bowl Championship Series’ five big-payout games. Ever since the BCS hijacked the postseason, that whining has become a rite of autumn, like rivalry games and falling leaves.

But this year promised a particularly nasty debate — and that was before Ohio State’s clueless president, Gordon Gee, volunteered his two cents on why the game doesn’t need a playoff. He said last week that teams from outside the six BCS conferences didn’t deserve to play for the national championship after padding their resumes against opponents the caliber of the “Little Sisters of the Poor.”

His pre-emptive strike was aimed at Boise State, everybody’s darling to run the table yet again and finally loosen the BCS conferences’ stranglehold on the title game. But a funny thing happened to the No. 3-ranked Broncos late Friday against Nevada; up 17 points by intermission, they got beat in overtime.

Coupled with comeback wins earlier the same day by BCS front-runners and unbeatens Auburn and Oregon, the debate might have ended then and there. But there’s still the problem of what to do with TCU — which inherited Boise State’s No. 3 slot in the latest BCS rankings and finished the regular season 12-0 at New Mexico — especially if Auburn and Oregon stumble next weekend in their remaining games.

Plenty of self-proclaimed experts, more than a few drawing paychecks from that very same BCS, contend that shouldn’t matter. In their eyes, a one-loss Auburn or Oregon team, or Stanford, Wisconsin, Ohio State or Arkansas for that matter, is more deserving than TCU.

The Horned Frogs’ last chance to state their case would have been running up the score Saturday against the lowly Lobos. And they wound up beating New Mexico 66-17.