Conference Realignment: Will Guaranteed BCS Bowl Bids Be Reconsidered?

More conference-shuffling news broke today as officials from Pittsburgh and Syracuse announced their intention to leave the Big East and bolt for the ACC. With the creation of the Pac-12 this season and the addition of Nebraska to the Big Ten, and all the talk swirling around Texas A&M and the dissipating Big 12, a big question springs to the forefront.

What will happen to all those guaranteed BCS bowl bids?

As it stands now, the Pac-12 champion plays the Big Ten champion in the Rose Bowl; the Big 12 champion gets an automatic bid to the Fiesta Bowl; the ACC champion goes to the Orange Bowl and the SEC champion to the Sugar Bowl (unless the conference winner is in the BCS Championship; then it is the second-place team in each respective conference).

The BCS committee has it set up so all the best teams play in the biggest games and earn the highest ratings, which makes the most money for everyone involved. Realignment won’t really change this aspect of the BCS bowl scene, but it will have to evolve overall.

Just as the landscape of the major conferences is changing, so could the automatic bid system that goes with it. It seems like the Big 12 is the conference most at-risk, especially if Texas and Oklahoma jump ship to the Pac-12 or Big Ten. It’s hard to say what the college football world will look like after this all settles, but it seems as though we are heading towards four super conferences.  So, if the Big 12 and Big East disappear, who gets those eight automatic BCS slots?

With four super conferences, each could get an automatic bowl bid, assuming each conference had a championship game between division winners. Or, why not just give each division winner an automatic bid?

Currently, three at-large bids are given to match up teams in the Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls. But if a team is good enough to be the second best team in a Pac-12 that boasts powerhouses like Stanford, Oregon, USC, Texas and Oklahoma, shouldn’t they get an automatic bid too?

Can you imagine Texas playing Oregon for the right to represent the Pac-12 in the Rose Bowl? How about Notre Dame playing Ohio State for the Fiesta Bowl?

There is an endless amount of possibilities for how the bowl bids could be changed with the realignment flurry. But I would think they’d have to make some kind of change, especially with an entire conference that is promised a BCS bowl bid every year crumbling before our very eyes.