A few conferences come to mind when people start to discuss success in the Bowl Championship Series. Of course, the SEC leads the way, winning half of the twelve BCS National Championship games. In fact, the SEC has dominated the BCS over the last five years, and if Auburn defeats Oregon on January 10th of the new year, Auburn will be the fourth different SEC team to win the championship game over a four year span.
Obviously, there is a depth to the SEC that has earned the Automatic Qualifier status in the BCS. The Big XII also has shared in the BCS success. Texas and Oklahoma have both brought home the crystal hardware. Southern Cal carried the mantle for the Pac 10 by winning one championship game and playing in another. Ohio State won one for the Big Ten and Florida State hauled one in for the ACC.
Four of the five Automatic Qualifier conferences have a current member school that has won a BCS National Championship. Who is the odd cat out?
The Big East. The Big East has to hang their BCS National Championship game hat on two teams- the Miami Hurricanes and the Virginia Tech Hokies. Miami won a BCS National Championship Game while a member of the Big East and played in another. Virginia Tech lost their only national title shot as a member of the Big East.
Here is the problem for the Big East: Both of those programs are now in the ACC.
No current football program in the Big East has had a whiff of a national championship game in the BCS era.
This really should not surprise anyone. There have been discussions about pulling the Big East’s AQ status for the last couple of years, and those discussions are well founded. It’s time for the BCS to do what they need to do and institute the fourth rule change that would improve the BCS.
4. Remove the Big East from the List of Conferences Labeled as Automatic Qualifiers.
At first glance, this seems like cherry picking the right year to make this claim. Certainly, UConn playing in a $17 million bowl game and stealing a BCS slot away from more deserving suitors highlights the problems facing both the Big East and the BCS. But this isn’t a kneejerk reaction. Not even close.
Everyone expects the Big East to be playing some great games in early January. They just expect those games to take place on the hardwood and with the roundball, not on turf and with the pigskin. The Big East is a basketball league and a darn good one. But it isn’t a great football conference, and it hasn’t been since the inception of the BCS. They are also the only AQ conference that does not have a contractual tie with one of the BCS bowls. The Big East automatic qualifier won’t exactly be missed.
Consider this- The SEC has six wins in the BCS National Championship game alone. The Big East has six wins total in the BCS, and that counts those from Miami and Virginia Tech which are no longer member schools.
Obviously, The Connecticut Huskies playing in the BCS this year managed to put a spotlight on the Big East as a league. UConn failed to meet any of the qualifications for at-large consideration. They failed to win at least nine games and were not ranked in the top 14 of the BCS standings at the time of the BCS selection process. In fact, the Huskies did not finish in the top 25 of the current BCS standings.
If only this year was an anomaly…
But it isn’t.
In 2008 and 2009, only one Big East team was eligible for the BCS. That team was Cincinnati and coached by Brian Kelly who is now the head coach at Notre Dame. In 2007, West Virginia was the only Big East team that ended the season eligible in the BCS selection process. In 2006, the Big East surprised the world with two teams being eligible, West Virginia and Louisville. In a post Hurricane and Hokie world, 2006 was as good as it would get for the Big East.
Keep in mind, these teams earned automatic bids. But no other team from the conference was even an option for the BCS bowls to select.
Only three programs on the current Big East roster have even played in the BCS at all. West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Louisville are the only current Big East squads with a history of reaching the BCS. Examine those situations.
Basically, they just happened across extraordinary coaches to be at the right place at the right time.
Then the coaches left for bigger and greener pastures.
West Virginia and Louisville took the Big East flag into the Bowl Championship Series once the conference lost their two ringers. West Virginia had Rich Rodriguez during their BCS span that lasted from the 2005 to 2007 seasons. Louisville had Bobby Petrino as their head coach and led them to an Orange Bowl victory.
The Big East has been playing Russian Roulette with one bullet in the revolver every football season. This year, the Big East finally misfired when the chamber landed on UConn.
As soon as Rich Rodriguez left Morgantown, so did the Mountaineers from BCS consideration. When Bobby Petrino left for his stint of coaching in the NFL, the Cardinals fell back to a typical Big East team. History repeated itself again at the University of Cincinnati when Brian Kelly bolted to the domers at Notre Dame. The Bearcats did not even finish bowl eligible this season.
The Big East is chock-full of jobs that people use to get to other places. Rich Rodriguez was on top of the world at his alma mater, West Virginia. He used it as a stepping stone to get to Michigan.
The other AQ conferences are full of destination jobs. The SEC has Bama, Florida, Georgia, LSU, and Bobby Petrino’s new deal adds Arkansas to that list. Even the ACC has quality jobs like Florida State and Frank Beamer ain’t going anywhere as long as he wants to stay the head Hokie.
It is time for the Big East to give up their spot and have member institutions earn their way into the BCS like the rest of the non AQ conferences. And no, the Big East bid should not be given to the Mountain West. With BYU going independent, Utah heading to the newly formed Pac 12, and TCU bolting for the Big East, the Mountain West Conference will be in worse shape even though they have Boise State in the mix.
And no, adding TCU doesn’t make the Big East strong enough to keep their status. It simply would have kept the status quo this year with one very good team amongst a throng of average ones.
And face it, the Big East status quo isn’t very good.
