Big East: Does the Conference Deserve an Automatic BCS Berth?

I think most people would agree with me if I said the Big East was the worst conference out of all of the automatic qualifying conferences.  The Big East is made up of eight teams, none of whom are ranked! Even the Mountain West and WAC have two ranked teams each, with one from each conference in the top five.  And those conferences are non-automatic qualifying while a conference with NO ranked teams is? I'm just saying.  In fact, Northern Illinois (who are not in the Top 25) received over double the votes the top ranked Big East team, West Virginia, did.  Not another Big East team received a single vote.

Last year, in the Sugar Bowl, #3 Cincinnati (who were undefeated) faced off against one-loss #5 Florida who had just lost the SEC championship game to Alabama.  Florida won 51 to 24 in Tim Tebow's final game.  To heal the wounds a little, Brian Kelly had just left Cincinnati for Notre Dame.  

In the 2009 edition of the Sugar Bowl, #19 Virginia Tech (9-4) took on a two-loss #12 Cincinnati team. Cincinnati couldn't get squat done on offense and lost 20-7.

True, the three games prior they won against some pretty good teams.  But this year the Big East seems like there are no great teams.  If you put a Boise State in there, do they go undefeated? I would say there's a pretty good chance.  If you put an Oregon or an LSU in there, do they go undefeated? I would be surprised if they had anything more than one conference loss.  

This brings up the question, could the Mountain West or WAC be better than the Big East? The answer is no.  But the voters agree with me that the Mountain West and WAC do have better teams at the top than the Big East.  Going back to an earlier point, this also beckons the question: Would Northern Illinois be the best team in the Big East? No, I think it is ridiculous to rank a MAC team higher than the best Big East team.  Northern Illinois is only 2-2 out of conference (8-0 in MAC play) with losses to Iowa State and Illinois.  The only win they have against an AQ team is against 2-9 Minnesota.

I am not saying the Big East does not deserve a BSC berth, but I found it shocking of how the Big East is thought of by the voters.  This could be the first AQ conference in a decade to have an unranked team win the conference.  Of course, some people want to get rid of the BCS altogether which would make this irrelevant.