Thursday, June 3, 2010

Why Boise and the MWC are better apart

The Wimple has advocated a ten-team MWC (Boise being the 10th) for years– but today admits the fault of that advocacy. Boise being in the WAC for as long as possible before joining the MWC is a brilliant move, even if the brilliance results from an unintended result. While Boise and the MWC champ are in different conferences, both can (and frequently do) go undefeated, and in years like 2009, both can land a BCS berth. This is an unqualified good, for both teams, conferences, and indeed, for all of college football.

However, when Boise is a MWC-member, the chances of a MWC team going undefeated shrink substantially. From TCU’s perspective, running the Utah-BYU-AFA guantlet every year is hard enough. So hard, in fact, that only twice have the Horned Frogs done it unscathed. TCU has run the Utah-BYU-AFA-Boise gauntlet each of the last two seasons, and emerged 3-1 from it both times.

The Wimple thinks that the addition of Boise State to the MWC is a good idea only if a one-loss MWC champion is guaranteed a BCS berth.
Why the condition? Because one-loss champs are probably the best the conference is going to get, much more often than not, if the Big Three (plus Air Force) turns into the Big Four (plus Air Force).

So, here's to Boise State's present addition to the conference, effective 2011. May the Broncos and the Horned Frogs each win a BCS berth in 2010, as prelude to the change. And may the MWC win an autobid, beginning 2012.

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