MOUNTAIN WEST DOING ITS BEST TO PISS OFF OTHER NON-BCS CONFERENCES

While we were off crowning Utah as the first CFT National Champions, the Mountain West was taking their case to anyone who would listen that their conference champion deserved an automatic bid into the BCS festivities.While Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson detailed his plan to request a written change in the BCS procedures, he also went as far as hiring a lobbyist firm to help drum up support in the nation’s capitol.What he also did was piss off most of the other conferences that didn’t get an automatic spot in the BCS.Sun Belt commissioner Wright Waters and WAC commissioner Karl Benson are against an additional auto bid. Ditto for outgoing MAC commish Rick Chryst. As as ESPN.com blogger Graham Watson writes, they’ve got plenty of good points.“The Mountain West is being opportunistic. Utah’s season is still fresh in everyone’s mind and even though the evaluation is supposed to be four seasons, the Mountain West isn’t taking the chance that the next three seasons won’t be nearly as successful as 2008. The chance that the Mountain West will have two teams finish in the top 10 of the BCS standings each of the next three seasons -- a feat Benson said would be needed to offset the bottom half of the conference in terms of the automatic bid -- is slim. The Mountain West would have to have at least one undefeated team each of the next three years and one whose only losses were to teams ranked in the top 10. Judging by the schedules of the Mountain West teams in 2009, the chances of that happening in the coming year aren’t great.”I can’t say that I fault the Mountain West for trying to strike while the iron is hot, or the other conferences for calling BS. Say what you want for the achievements of Utah and TCU this season (and we at CFT have said plenty), but the bottom half of this conference is nowhere near as strong as the current BCS conferences.So while the entire machine might absolutely be broken, adding the Mountain West wouldn’t be much of a fix. It’d probably be closer to throwing a band-aid on a bullet wound.