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Mountain West's BCS destiny is tied to WAC

By John Branch / The Fresno Bee

Published 05/08/05

Hidden deep in the complex mess of the latest Bowl Championship Series tinkering is a clear message that affects the future of Fresno State athletics.

If it wasn't obvious before, it is now: To go big time, the Mountain West Conference needs part of the Western Athletic Conference.

Mainly, it needs Fresno State and Boise State.

And Fresno State and Boise State need a couple more good football seasons to forever alter their athletic departments.

The BCS is changing the way it doles out the cherished automatic spots in its bowls. No longer are the Pac-10, Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big East conferences guaranteed at least one spot.

Instead, conferences will be graded by the performance of their football teams over a four-year period that began last fall. In 2008 and 2009, and probably beyond, the five to seven conferences with the best ratings from 2004 to 2007 will get automatic entries and the easy money that comes with BCS inclusion.

Neither the Mountain West nor the WAC is strong enough to get an automatic BCS invite on its own. But the right combination probably gets one there.

The smartest combination looks to be a Mountain West with the addition of Fresno State and Boise State.

When the BCS changes were announced recently, much of the focus was on the Big East, weakened by the defections of Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech to the ACC.

The Big East, we learned, will be allowed to include last year's Louisville team in its rating, even though the Cardinals played in Conference USA. Louisville finished 10th in the BCS standings and joins the Big East this season.

What's critical for Fresno State is the loophole that allows that.

"Your conference membership at the time of evaluation is what will be evaluated," BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg told reporters. "So Louisville will count under that provision, assuming the report is accepted [by college presidents], in the Big East Conference. That is, assuming it is still there when the evaluation is taken four years from now."

Catch that? What matters during this four-year evaluation process is not what conference teams play in during 2004, '05, '06 and '07. Conferences will be judged by their rosters of teams in 2008.

That means conferences can do some last-minute shifting to improve their standing, grabbing good teams from other conferences to sneak into the BCS.

And that means the Mountain West -- the likeliest BCS candidate among the smaller conferences -- can wait a couple of years, keep an eye on Fresno State and Boise State and others, and get those schools into the conference just in time for the 2008 season to help snare a BCS automatic bid.

The BCS is grading conferences with three measurements: the average rank of the league's highest-rated team in the BCS standings; the average rank in the BCS computer polls of all the league's teams; and the number of Top 25 teams.

Last season, the first of four under the new scoring system, the Mountain West had Utah, the first team from a non-BCS conference to earn a spot in a BCS bowl. But the Utes lost their coach, Urban Meyer, and they might not start this season ranked in the polls.

Most of the rest of the Mountain West is decidedly average. Six teams had average computer rankings of between 50 and 90 among the 117 Division I teams.

The WAC is bogged down by five teams that last year were ranked 100th or worse in at least one BCS computer poll.

But it has two teams more consistent and more highly regarded than any in the Mountain West. Boise State was ranked ninth in last year's final BCS standings. Fresno State wasn't in the Top 25, but that's because the BCS doesn't recompute its rankings after the bowls -- something it needs to change.

Most of the early 2005 polls have Fresno State and Boise State in the Top 25, ahead of any teams from the Mountain West.

The Mountain West has treated expansion slowly and deliberately, partly because of an unwillingness to share revenues with more teams, partly out of the fear of accepting a school that quickly would embarrass it with scandal -- still a major reason an invitation for Fresno State never is guaranteed.

The Mountain West also has wanted to wait and see whether the ever-changing BCS landscape would force it to expand further in the coming years.

Now it knows.

If Fresno State can prove its horrible reputation can be mended, and the football team can parlay its momentum into greater success, the Mountain West won't be able to ignore the Bulldogs for long.

That's if BCS money is an issue.

And you know it is.

This isn't good news for TCU. Fresno and Boise will make it more difficult for them to win, especially with travel to the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones. As the only Central Time Zone team, every TCU team and student athlete will have tremendous travel demands and their fans will see less of their student-athletes.

Plus, becoming an automatic BCS conference may stilll not happen and/or require the Big East to lose their spot. The big boys (current BCS, less the Big Least) will make it very difficult to automatically qualify.

As for C-USA, it is an excellent conference with a comparable opportunity to the MWC!

TCU's move just continues to look more and more foolish.

Not if they get BCS $$$$

I think I might put up with long travel and bad Times to be in the BCS mix...............

oh you people are so prejudiced against TCU you can say anything that makes them look bad. Look if they go to 12 then they go to Divisions which should make travel easier. Now if they got stuck in a Western Division of the MWC you might have a point. BTW I don't think that many of you want to look at the real numbers of a MWC 12 (plus TCU, BSU and FSU) vs the New CUSA. The MWC 12 IS CLEARLY WITHOUT QUESTION the more competitive league with the CUSA far far below. So everytime you say TCU's decision looks more stupid every day you might be showing your own ignorance.

I agree. I don't see how this makes TCU's move more foolish. If the MWC snags Boise and Fresno and those teams continue their winning ways, then under the proposed system, yes, it would seem the MWC would have a shot at BCS inclusion. And that is all that seems to matter nowadays.

If it doesn't happen, then TCU's move is a wretched as it appears today and for the next 3 years.

Hopefully sometime soon, our football program will enjoy the success on the field that TCU's has ever since they went 1-10 a few years back.

I believe that if the MWC expands to 12, it would not be a boon for TCU. With 12 teams there would be two divisions and you know that the Gang of five is in one division with one other team (not likely to be TCU). First, they would need to add three teams (not just two mentioned in the article). That would create a problem for them. Who should they add? The candidates from CUSA would be the usual suspects: UH, UTEP and SMU. None of them would be very interested from what I've heard. The candidates from the WAC in addition to BSU and FSU would be Hawaii, Nevada, and NMSU. SDS does not want Fresno. They might agree to Fresno is Hawaii were added. UNLV has a legislature problem which wants Nevada in the MWC (similar to Baylor and VT). New Mexico has a similar problem, but might be molified if UTEP joined. TCU would want a travel partner. Then of course there is the PAC 10, BCS defense ploy of adding two teams from among AFA, BYU, and Utah. Then suddenly, the MWC is no different from the old WAC.

TCU will be fine and maybe in better shape than ever. We need to look at what this does to SMU. SMU will be in one of the weakest conference divisions in collge football. Even the moderately better strength of CUSA East will not provide much cover. When the others look to find matches to strenthen their conferences in 2008, unless we are winning, we will be left at the gate again with no choices. This is not good unless we can win between now and then- and that probabilty with our current AD and possibly coach discourages me.

MWC is a nice conference with good teams, but I still think TCU is looking over their shoulder for another deal.

HS recruits certainly want to be on TV-- but Grandma & family cant stay awake for the SDSU game kickoff at 8PM PacST (here in Texas).

"SWC" #2-- coming to a stadium near you.

assuming Fresno and Boise continue to field solid teams, I agree the MWC's expansion to 12 by adding these schools might be inevitable, and if it earns them more frequent invites to the BCS table, then TCU has indeed made a good move. We need to concentrate on improving our own product and proving that CUSA can be as strong a conference with it's new makeup as it was before the Big East defections. If we don't improve dramaticallyt in the next few years under our current coaches, we will not likely see any more stability in CUSA than we did in the WAC. Why is it so difficult for so many SMU fans to acknowledge that SMU is one of the least attractive schools to be assocated with these days?

You people are all looking through the rear view mirror and not the windshield. Fresno is always on the bubble of recruiting worst, academic non performers and they have medium to poor attendence - plus the gang of five does not want 12 because they no longer have the votes to win - do the math (5 out of 12 is a minority vote).

Boise is in a nonmarket for TV - no attraction there in any way.

W's and L's from year to year do not make these decisions - it is total attendence and TV ratings that matter - - I am not saying this helps SMU, but Fresno and Boise are not the problem, and TCU's move will not help them - but unlike others I don't blame them for trying - it is a no lose situation for them - not like CUSA won't take them back and if the roll of the dice works they win big.

The BCS is not expanding by another conference, and the Big East is not in trouble - that is the bottom line. None of these schools are getting in - our best shot is to hope to stay division 1 when they move to downgrade the lower conferences - CUSA and MWC will probably make the cut - WAC and Soutlhand will not.

If our program can't ever do better than a 3 or 4 win season.....does any of this even matter? Let's see 3 or 4 winning seasons and bowl victories - then maybe we can say that we deserve better. With the way our program has performed over the last 15 years.....we should be gratefull that that "CUSA - Light" invited us.

winning seasons alone won't get SMU any bowl invites...just ask Rice. The Owls have had some winning seasons and been passed over. Why? Because bowls want tickets sold and butts in seats. If winning doesn't cure SMU's lack of fan support, you may see some 7-4 seasons go unrewarded.