Mountain West Pushing To Gain BCS Entry
Very true, Craig. We all know the earliest this will change—if at all—is the 2012 season, after the end of the current four-year cycle, following which who gets an automatic bid to the BCS can be evaluated.
The rules are loose, taking into consideration final top 25 BCS rankings and the number of wins each team has. This past year in the final BCS rankings only the Big XII had more teams ranked in the top 16 than the Mountain West. Plus, the league had more teams in that range than the Pac-10, Big East, and ACC.
A good point made by ESPN’s non-BCS blogger, Graham Watson:
"The Mountain West has taken a huge lead in this race, and if history is any indication, it won’t be relinquishing that lead any time soon. The Mountain West has had at least one team with double-digit wins in every season except 1999, the first year of the conference. And since 2006, the conference has boasted at least three teams with nine or more wins each season."
The league will need to try to keep this going. In my opinion, they need to go to two of the next three BCS games and win at least one.
The league also needs multiple teams to get to 10 wins, win those big non-conference games against BCS teams, and the bottom teams need to step it up and try to win more games.
This is the perfect time to discuss this, even though nothing will happen for the upcoming season. It is important for Commissioner Thompson to put this topic on the table at the April meeting.
The rules do say that there can be five to seven automatic bids for the BCS bowls. With five major bowls, moving to seven auto bids would still allow for three at-large berths.
We will wait until April to see what change, if any, the meeting between Thompson and the BCS powers will bring.
If you like what you read be lazy and Subscribe to The Mountain West Conference Connection by Email or in your Feeder.
