Bowl Projections: Big East Is Stealing BCS Bowl Berth from More Deserving Team

Whichever team manages to come out on top of the atrocious Big East conference does not deserve to be playing in a BCS bowl.

It’s just appalling that a conference with just one ranked team out of eight is allowed to automatically qualify for a bowl game that features the Top 10 teams in the nation.

It would be one thing if the ranked team was near the top, but the West Virginia Mountaineers are No. 23 in the nation right now and sandwiched between the overrated, four-loss Texas Longhorns and the 10-2 Conference USA Southern Miss Golden Eagles.

It’s incredulous that they most likely will be facing a top team and forcing a legitimately good team like Boise State, Arkansas or Kansas State from a serious bowl game and relegating them to some flavor-of-the-week sponsorship bowl.

The conference deserves to lose AQ status after their performance this year and the fact that they sent a 8-4 UConn Huskies team to the Fiesta Bowl last year to get stomped out by the Oklahoma Sooners.

The last time they even fielded a competitive team was back in 2009 when they sent undefeated Cincinnati to the Sugar Bowl but still got blown out by the Florida Gators.

With TCU reneging on their acceptance to join the conference and Syracuse and Pittsburgh jumping ship as well, there is no reason to continue allowing the Big East to be an automatic qualifier for a BCS bowl.

By adding Houston, SMU and UCF, the Big East has done little to convince anyone that they are still a power conference up there with the likes of the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and other collections of schools that field consistent and competitive programs.

They are a joke and this should be the last year that the BCS allows them to automatically qualify.