Where does the Mountain West go?

The quick invites to Nevada and Fresno are looking a little on the stupid side now, but at least Utah State didn't accept an invite. The Mountain West tried using the best sticks in their arsenal to hang on to BYU. Alas, this only seemed to make BYU more eager to dart. Perhaps if the MWC were more willing to address BYU's concerns, they might still have them in an eight team conference.

As it is, Mountain West is a 10 team conference that still has aspirations of a BCS autobid. A ten team league with Boise, TCU, BYU, Utah and Air Force on top would probably been able to secure the bid. Surprisingly, the defections of Utah and BYU have only minimal impact on the "objective" criteria. Thanks to the strong showings of Boise and TCU the past two seasons, the MWC still meets two of the three BCS inclusion criteria.
For the first, the highest ranked team in the conference needs to finish in the top 6 of conferences. TCU's 4th place ranking last season obviously fit the bill. For 2008, Boise's 9th or TCU's 11th are both good for 5th best conference.(Utah's 6th would have been 4th.)

For the third criteria, the teams ranked in the top 25 are put through a convoluted formula to obtain a number. A conference needs to score at 50% of the score of the highest ranked team to meet this criteria. For 2009, the "one-day" mountain west (with Boise before defections) was the top team. Even without BYU and Utah, the high rankings of TCU and Boise the last two seasons keep them in good condition. The invitations of Fresno and Nevada actually hurt in this criteria, as the score is weighted by conference size. However, even the new Mountain West should easily meet it.

The second criteria is the big problem. It takes the final regular season computer ranking of all teams in the conference. To automatically get the bid, a conference needs to finish in the top 6. Using the Sagarin conference ratings as a proxy, the MWC is a pretty solid 7th best conference. Number 6 is Big 10, which, alas has upgraded with Nebraska. Behind MWC are Conference USA and WAC. The WAC is pretty much out of the picture with the MWC grabbing their 3 best teams. Those three teams help the MWC to maintain their led over C-USA, however, they actually bring them further away from the Big-10.

A conference is able to seek an "exemption" if they are in the top 5 in criteria one or two and the top 7 in the other and have a score on number 3 that is at least 33% of the top team. The "new look" MWC easily meets all those criteria. However, this leaves things in the political realm. The MWC containing the state of Utah had a strong case for deserving the exemption. They also had a US Senator pushing strongly for opening the BCS. The new MWC? The on-field product is not quite as good and the political pressure not nearly as strong. The audience is also an issue. The top teams draw an average of less than 40,000 fans per game. TCU, Air Force, Fresno and Boise all draw in the 30,000s. New Mexico, San Diego State, Colorado State and UNLV are in the 20,000s while Wyoming and Nevada are in the 10000s. (BYU has far and away the leader at 64k, with Utah 2nd at 45k) Every other BCS AQ conference has multiple teams ranked higher than the highest ranked MWC team (TCU).

Market sizes also don't look so hot. MWC has a strong hold on the Fresno and Boise markets. There is also a lock on the states of Nebraska and Wyoming, as well as a strong showing in New Mexico. Unfortunately all of these are rather small markets, many with significant newcomer population (not many people in Nevada have a connection to the schools.) For major markets, MWC has toeholds. TCU is in Dallas, though it is second fiddle to the Texas, Tech, and A&M (as well as in competition with SMU). Colorado State and Air Force are both somewhat close to Denver, though they are second to Colorado in a fairly week college football market. San Diego State is a "lesser" school in San Diego. There are probably more people their routing for the LA schools.

Numerically, the MWC is in the same condition for BCS auto-qualification as it was before BYU and Utah left. It is still a possibility. However, obtaining an exemption has become much more difficult. The best scenario now would be for the bottom of the conference to rise to the occasion and be worthy of a BCS conference.