From Los Angeles to New York, Seattle to Miami, there’s a favorite pastime this time of year: criticizing the Bowl Championship Series, college football’s much-maligned system for determining the national champion.

And who gets the honor of defending the system from a nation of hyper-critical sports fans and AM radio windbags? That would be Prairie Village resident Bill Hancock.

Hancock, the BCS’s first executive director, is a native of Hobart, Okla., and a graduate in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. After starting his career as an assistant sports information director at the university, he went on to a successful run with the NCAA, leading March Madness for 13 years.

In Thursday’s USA Today, Hancock offered a stubborn defense of the BCS system:

We’ve been called communists, a cartel, crooks — and worse — but that’s malarkey. And I’m proud to stand up and point out why college football is so popular and why our system works so well.

Read the whole column here.