Mountain West Making Strong Case for BCS Auto-Bids

The BCS has a website. It's got all kinds of interesting tidbits on it. On it you can find ratings for past games and future game schedules, as well as this gem: "The BCS isn't an entity; it is merely an event that the conferences and Notre Dame manage along with the bowls in order to create a matchup between the No. 1 and No. 2 team in a bowl game."

One of the biggest issues with the BCS is access. Access matters because it's tied to how much each school is guaranteed from the whole process. Why do Mountain West and WAC teams need to go undefeated to play in the BCS (only earning $4 million), while a four-loss ACC team waltzes into the Orange Bowl to collect $17 million dollars? Why does the ACC get to keep its auto-bid after going 2-9 in BCS games?

Well, the BCS’ website details exactly how this non-entity decides how to dole out those millions and millions of dollars. You can find these rules under bcsfootball.org's FAQ section.

“What about the process for determining which conferences receive automatic BCS bowl bids in the future. How does that process work?

"Each conference will be evaluated over a four-year period based on the three elements: the average rank of the highest ranked team, the average rank of all conference teams, and the number of teams in the top 25.”

I'm no lawyer, but that’s some pretty vague language to base a multimillion-dollar decision on.

First, one of the criteria isn’t even completely public: The BCS only releases rankings for the top 25, but the evaluation's second criterion is "the average rank of ALL conference teams."

Second, when are the numbers calculated? Before the bowls or after? Since the computer polls are used to determine the championship game, no BCS poll is released publicly after the game. Do they have a private poll that is computed for this calculation, or do they just use the pre-bowl data?

Third, what do they mean by "average"? Median? Mean? I am also no statistician, but I do know there are many ways to average numbers.

Finally, the biggest problem is there is no specificity about how the conferences are evaluated. It just says that they are evaluated. Would one of the currently non-automatic qualifying conferences need to pass one of the insiders, or would ranking nearly as well as they do be enough? Who knows?

My guess is since the six current conferences made the rules in the first place, they will always be working pretty hard to keep things the way they are.

The first evaluation period was from 2004-2007. Here are the results of the two public criteria (provided they used the publicly released pre-bowl rankings and a basic average). They're not particularly pretty for the MWC.

First, the average of the highest ranked team from each conference from 2004-2007 in the pre-bowl BCS poll.

SEC and Pac-10: 3.5

Big Ten: 4.25

Big XII: 4.5

ACC: 8.25

Big East: 8.75 (The Big East was allowed to include 2004 numbers from what were then members of CUSA. Without these additions their average would have been 11.5.)

MWC: 14.25 (Although if the Mountain West invited Boise State and the BCS allowed their numbers to be used like it allowed the Big East, their average would be 11.25.)

WAC: 15 (Although the WAC number is problematic since they didn't have any top 25 teams one year).

Second, the average number of teams ranked in the top 25 from 2004-2007.

SEC: 5

Big Ten and XII: 4

ACC: 3.75

Pac-10: 3

Big East: 2.75

MWC + Boise: 1.5

MWC: 1

WAC: 1

Now, looking at those numbers, it's not too hard to see where the line is drawn. (Although a pretty solid argument could be made to remove the ACC and Big East. They do manage to get multiple teams ranked, but there’s a very clear drop-off in the highest ranked-teams category.)

But here's where things get interesting. 2008 is the beginning of a new four-year evaluation period, and the Mountain West is off to a very good start. Here are the numbers for two of the BCS Evaluation Criteria (provided they used the publicly released pre-bowl rankings).

After one year (2008), the highest team from each conference using the pre-bowl BCS rankings was.

Big XII: 1

SEC: 2

Pac-10: 5

MWC: 6

Big Ten: 8

WAC: 9

Big East: 12

ACC: 14

The number of ranked teams shows a similar shakeup.

Big XII: 5

SEC, Big Ten: 4

ACC, MWC: 3 (The MWC would have four teams in if they added Boise and their numbers are allowed to count toward the MWC's).

Pac-10, Big East: 2

WAC: 1

Basically, things are looking up for the Mountain West. It's very hard to know exactly how well they are doing, since neither the evaluation criteria nor the data itself is entirely public, but the numbers that are public bode well for them.

If they continue to have years like they did in 2008, it will take some serious number bending to keep them out of the group of conferences with automatic access to BCS games.