COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Even if TCU and Boise State run the table, they still don't deserve to be in the Bowl Championship Series title game, Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee said Wednesday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the president at the university with the largest athletic program in the country said that TCU and Boise State do not face a difficult enough schedule to play in the national championship game.

"Well, I don't know enough about the X's and O's of college football," said Gee, formerly the president at West Virginia, Colorado, Brown and Vanderbilt universities. "I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day.

"So I think until a university runs through that gantlet that there's some reason to believe that they not be the best teams to [be] in the big ballgame."

Boise State president Bob Kustra, in an interview with the Idaho Statesman, returned fire.

"The BCS has finally found someone to stand up and defend the indefensible and Gordon Gee proved it -- he not just proved that it's indefensible but he did so with facts that are simply wrong," Kustra told the newspaper.

Boise State has beaten one team in the current top 25 of the BCS standings, beating No. 16 Virginia Tech. Ohio State has played two top-25 BCS teams -- losing to No. 7 Wisconsin but beating No. 24 Iowa. TCU has beaten No. 20 Utah.

According to Jeff Sagarin's strength of schedule ratings in USA Today, Ohio State has the 59th-ranked schedule in the country, while TCU is No. 68 and Boise State is No. 73.

"Everyone in intercollegiate football knows that athletic directors of those large power conferences are scheduling more and more teams who are I-AA, who are teams at the weaker end of the [non-automatic qualifying] conferences, and for Gee to stand up and talk about murderer's row every week is just the height of folly," Kustra told the Statesman. "It's ridiculous. I think he's going to set off a firestorm he probably has no interest in creating. To say that he overstated his case is an understatement."

TCU athletic director Chris Del Conte told Galloway & Company on ESPN 103.3 FM in Dallas: "To start throwing stones at your house, they must be jealous ... [when] someone starts taking shots at TCU, that means we've arrived."

Del Conte also took issue with Ohio State's nonconference schedule, which this year included Marshall from Conference USA along with Ohio and Eastern Michigan from the Mid-American Conference. The Buckeyes also played Miami, which was ranked No. 12 at the time.

"I had no idea they were going out and testing themselves week in and week out," he said.

Kustra said it was hypocritical of Ohio State and all of the major BCS conferences to demean teams like Boise State. He said most of those conferences refuse to schedule his school.

"It's easy for the presidents to talk, but ask the ADs when's the last time that they seriously entertained taking requests or inviting Boise State to [play them]," Kustra told the AP. "If you're Boise State or TCU, they're going to want to steer way clear of you."