BCS Rankings: Big East Doesn't Deserve Automatic BCS Bid

If there's anything the BCS has taught us in recent years, other than to expect the unexpected in college football, it's that the Big East simply doesn't belong at the big kids' table.

Last year, the fledgling conference sent 8-4 and unranked Connecticut to the Fiesta Bowl, where the Huskies were hustled by Oklahoma, 48-20. In 2010, the Big East sent an undefeated Cincinnati squad to the Sugar Bowl, where it was flummoxed by Florida, 51-24.

That marked the Bearcats' second consecutive loss in a BCS bowl, following a disappointing 20-7 decision against Virginia Tech in the 2009 Orange Bowl.

The league hasn't given rise to a legitimate national title contender since Miami and Virginia Tech bolted for the ACC in 2004.

Instead, the Big East has made life easy for one lucky BCS challenger each year, with West Virginia, Cincinnati, UConn, Louisville, Rutgers and Pitt—more than half the conference's FBS contingent—degrading each other in the name of parity.

Now that WVU, Pitt and Syracuse are bound for new conferences, the Big East will soon be left with nothing but a jumble of jokers, without any history or tradition worth mentioning, to comprise its football contingent.

Which should—and ultimately will—leave the Big East out of the BCS, at least as far as automatic qualifying is concerned. The league, led by commissioner John Marinatto, has spent the last few months trying to cobble together new members. However, attempts to bring aboard the likes of BYU, Boise State, San Diego State, Central Florida and Houston, among others, have yet to bear any fruit of consequence.

In other words, the Big East is screwed, as well it should be. The current scenario, in which Louisville, Cincinnati and West Virginia are caught in an atrocious web that requires some sort of mental acrobatics to untangle, is just the latest bit of proof to support that assertion.

While one of those three will get a free pass into college football's Big Dance when all is said and done, there may well be a number of strong, double-digit-win teams, including Boise State, Michigan and Kansas State, that get left out in the cold.

If the BCS' job is to reward the very best in college football, can anyone even begin to consider the Big East's current arrangement to be a fair one to the sport as a whole?

Rank	Team	BCS Average
1	LSU	1.000
2	Alabama	.955
3	Oklahoma State	.871
4	Stanford	.856
5	Virginia Tech	.781
6	Houston	.740
7	Boise State	.703
8	Arkansas	.700
9	Oregon	.686
10	Oklahoma	.671
11	Kansas State	.570
12	South Carolina	.568
13	Michigan State	.537
14	Georgia	.535
15	Wisconsin	.458
16	Michigan	.431
17	Baylor	.391
18	TCU	.331
19	Nebraska	.258
20	Clemson	.198
21	Penn State	.138
22	Texas	.133
23	West Virginia	.124
24	Southern Miss	.072
25	Missouri	.059