Year in and year out the Big East Conference has proven to be one of the weakest of the automatic qualifying conferences in D1 football. At the same time, the Mountain West Conference has established itself as the premiere mid-major conference by consistently beating teams from every BCS conference, including a 10-5 record against BCS schools in 2008. After the performances of both conferences last year and the way they stack up this year, its time to revoke the "automatic qualifying" title from the Big East and give it to the Mountain West.
Going into bowl season last year, the Big East had two teams ranked in the AP top 25 poll - Cincinnati at number 12 and Pitt at 18. Meanwhile, the MWC had 3 teams ranked going into bowl season - Utah at number 7, TCU at 11, and BYU at 17. Unfortunately for the Big East, both Cincinnati and Pitt went on to lose to lower ranked teams in their bowls finishing with only Cincinnati and West Virginia (who snuck in with a convincing 1 point win over 8-5 North Carolina) in the final rankings. Utah and TCU both beat top 10 teams in their bowl games finishing 2nd and 7th respectively in the final poll. And even though BYU lost their bowl game to a tough Arizona team, they still managed to stay in the final poll at number 25. At the end of the 2008-2009 season, it was pretty apparent that the MWC was by far the better conference when compared to the Big "Least".
Going into this season, things haven't changed much. D1 coaches have taken note of the MWC dominance and have voted 3 representatives into the initial Top 25 Coaches Poll. Meanwhile the closest the Big East can get to the Top 25 is Pitt at 30. To put it another way, nearly half of the teams in the Mountain West are considered better teams than anybody in the Big East. Of course, it can't help that the top two RB's from last year's Big East both left school early for the NFL. With all of these factors in mind, to say that anybody from the Big East has earned a BCS bowl over a MWC team would be criminally insane.
And it's not even just the top 3 teams in the MWC that are getting any preseason love. Just a couple of days ago Mel Kiper Jr. picked UNLV as one of his "surprise" teams for the season. Also, Air Force is returning 14 starters from last year's bowl team and should end up bowl eligible for a third straight year. If things turn out like they're supposed to, the MWC will have 5 out of 9 teams bowl eligible. Top to bottom the MWC has shown they are ready to become the next player in the BCS party.
So, do we really have to suffer through another year of watching a higher ranked Big East team fall on their face as an automatic qualifier, while multiple MWC teams prove they are the real deal? It is time for the NCAA to right their wrongs and start giving us the bowl matchups we deserve. In the end, only a playoff system would give us what we really want, but for now we can hope for this.
