COLUMN: Small conferences win football’s dominoes game
Before too long, every college that is not in a power conference will owe the Atlantic Coast Conference a thank you.
About a month ago, Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College each accepted invitations to join the ACC. In the weeks that followed, the dominoes fell in college football.
The Big East grabbed Cincinnati, DePaul, Marquette, Louisville and South Florida from Conference USA.
CUSA then turned around and nabbed Marshall and Central Florida from the Mid-America Conference and Rice, Southern Methodist and Tulsa from the Western Athletic Conference.
New Mexico State and Utah State then moved from the Sun Belt to the WAC.
And the dominoes are still falling elsewhere.
This will ultimately be the end of the current Bowl Championship Series system.
As it stands, there are six conferences which champions receive automatic bids to a BCS bowl game (and $8 million dollars for going): The PAC 10, Big Ten, Big XII, Southeastern Conference, ACC and Big East. Together, those conferences make up 62 of the 117 schools in Division I-A football.
With the Big East losing its two powerhouse teams (Miami and Virginia Tech), they no longer carry a whole lot of weight as a power conference.
Next year when its contract is up, the BCS will have to either remove the Big East’s automatic bid or include the next best conference, namely the Mountain West.
Despite what they tell you in Salt Lake and Provo, the Mountain West isn’t nearly as good as the other BCS conferences. It wouldn’t be very fair to, for instance, the second best team in the BIG 10, Purdue (ranked No. 10) to have to play in the Cotton Bowl when unranked Utah gets a BCS game.
But at the same time, if they just drop the Big East from the BCS then there will only be five conferences and 55 teams in power as opposed to 62 teams and six conferences outside. That gives the smaller conferences a bigger say as to what goes on in Division I-A football.
If there has ever been a time for a playoff in college football, it will be next year when the BCS contract is re-negotiated.
There are a few different playoff systems that would work. Ideally, a 16-team tournament with every conference champion and the next five best teams involved would be the way to go.
This way, every team that could possibly say they are the best in the country will be playing for a championship.
However, this way is also the least likely to happen. A lot more support can be found for an eight team tournament, with certain power conference champions getting automatic bids with a few more at-large teams competing.
If any tournament is introduced in 2005, it will only have four teams playing for the championship.
Using the current BCS poll, instead of matching up No. 1 and No. 2 in a bowl, they would match up No. 1 and No. 4 in one game, and No. 2 and No. 3 in another. The winners would then play against each other for the title.
While all the tournament debates rage on, one thing is almost certain. There will most likely be another BCS bowl in 2005, meaning that teams from smaller conferences (like USU) will have a better shot at playing in a high profile bowl game if they have a good year.
That is not possible under the current system.
Teams like Marshall and BYU in recent history have been undefeated when they were eliminated from BCS bowl game consideration.
This year, Texas Christian (which is not in a power conference) is No. 6 in the BCS ranking and has a chance of making a high profile bowl game – if they don’t lose.
The only other teams the BCS is looking at right now have two things in common: They are from power conferences and they have lost at least one game.
Access to BCS bowl games will get easier in 2005 for schools not in a power conference. Those schools should all write big thank you notes to the ACC for shaking things up at the top.
Bryan Hinton is a junior majoring in print journalism. Comments can be sent to bhhinton@cc.usu.edu.