Big East makes BCS bid MORE secure?

[SirFozzie]

The HELL?????

As one of my friends said, when I showed him this article.. Obscene. Unreal.

Is the Big East still a major football conference?

It's looking that way, reports the Boston Globe citing Bowl Championship Series sources.

Doing some major politicking with its BCS partners, the Big East made its automatic bid in the BCS more secure in the last month.

The Big East shored up its automatic BCS bid after convincing BCS representatives to consider the strengths of incoming Big East members Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida and to disregard outgoing members Boston College and Temple.

A conference can lose its automatic bid for not averaging a top-12 finish for its champion over a four-year span according to BCS regulations.

This year's Big East champion, Pittsburgh, is No. 21 in the BCS rankings. That would have started the "doomsday clock" on the league's need to average a top-12 finish.

But Louisville (No. 8 ESPN/USA Today; No. 7 AP) is 10th in the BCS, so the Big East keeps a run of top-10 finishes going back to 1999 when Virginia Tech, now a member of the ACC, finished second.

Although the criteria for automatic bids will change beginning with the new BCS contract in 2006, the inclusion of Louisville this season gives the Big East a more secure spot in the rankings.

[kcchief19]

Huh. There is so much irony that if I had an Irony Detector, it would have just folded into itself and opened a pathway to another dimension.

The Big East postpones failing to keep the minimum requirement for a BCS auto bid by using the standing of Louisville, a team who achieved its ranking in a conference thought to be so inferior that it is undeserving an automatic BCS bid.

I think it is simply postponing the inevitable. The Big East is a mid-major now, to borrow a basketball term. I don't see how they can justify keeping the Big East as a BCS conference when so many of its members are now formerly non-BCS schools or BCS conference bottom feeders.

It would be like Baylor joining the Mountain West and giving that conference a BCS bid.

Playoff, playoff, playoff.

[Abe Sargent]

Huh. There is so much irony that if I had an Irony Detector, it would have just folded into itself and opened a pathway to another dimension.

The Big East postpones failing to keep the minimum requirement for a BCS auto bid by using the standing of Louisville, a team who achieved its ranking in a conference thought to be so inferior that it is undeserving an automatic BCS bid.

I think it is simply postponing the inevitable. The Big East is a mid-major now, to borrow a basketball term. I don't see how they can justify keeping the Big East as a BCS conference when so many of its members are now formerly non-BCS schools or BCS conference bottom feeders..


I expect that, with Miami and V-Tech gone, some team or teams wil step into the power vacuum and become major franchises. Whether it will be Lousville, Pitt, WVU or whomever, it still to be determined, but I suspect that in five years, we'll consider at least one and maybe two Big East teams perinnial BCS contenders at the same level of V Tech.

-Anxiety

[bronconick]

That's crap. If they want to count Louisville, maybe they should send Louisville to the Fiesta Bowl and let Pitt play in the Liberty Bowl.

[Ragone]

Realize that nobody wanted to schedule Louisville.. before you go bashing their schedule this year.. Only Miami stepped up to play Louisville in a home and home.. And i get the sneaking feeling Miami might try and buy out of that road game this coming year..

Regardless, Louisville was consistant this year in beating the crap outta everyone (other then miami, a game which they really should have won too)

I do think its kinda shifty the big east is allowed to use teams not even in their conference to protect their bids, and i'm not a big fan of the bcs.. However i do argue that adding all those teams doesn't make the Big east a "Mid Major" at best.. Hell, how many years did the pac 10 only have one good team?

[ScottVib]

That's crap. If they want to count Louisville, maybe they should send Louisville to the Fiesta Bowl and let Pitt play in the Liberty Bowl.
Actually this was announced by Big XII and current BCS Commissioner Kevin Weiberg back in October:

Source: BCSFootball.org

"Kelly Whiteside, USA Today: Hi, Kevin. I just had a question about the Big East, when you look at their highest rated team it's, West Virginia at 20 and three non-BCS teams are above them. Can you address if they will have an automatic bid in their future in the system?

Kevin Weiberg: Well what you said there, Kelly, I think, is the key point. You know, any evaluation that we would have of any conference would be one that would be more than a single season evaluation. And we have not finalized how future automatic qualification status will be determined.

But what we are thinking about and continuing to work on is a system that will take in to account a four-year performance rating of a conference. And we'll try to look at elements other than just a single team's relative ranking in the system. We're really interested in understanding the overall strength of conferences as reflected by teams in the top 12 and top 25, as well as overall strength.

We've not settled on how we will go about doing that, quite yet, but that's kind of where our focus has been. I think it's also fair to point out that in past years, we've had other conferences whose champions have been ranked less than 12 - rather lower than 12, in the final polls. So, again, I think we would view it as trying to not overreact to any conference's performance on a single-season basis.

Kelly Whiteside: Just as a quick follow up, you don't expect any changes until when, do you think?

Kevin Weiberg: Well I think the way we're talking about it at this point, Kelly, is that we would really plan to not have an evaluation of AQ status until we've gone through an additional four-year period. So the two years of the remaining BCS structure, and the two years of any new structure. And of course that assumes that there is a new structure rolling forward here at some point.

But that is the way we have talked about it. And it would also include a review of teams that are part of the conference at the time of the evaluation. So as conference realignment continues to play out, conferences are going to get credit for the performance of teams that are migrating or moving in to their conference. That's another important element of the consideration as we go forward. "

http://www.bcsfootball.org/news.cfm?headline=53