Despite the recent success of Boise State and TCU, the BCS denied the Mountain West an AQ exemption.
For the Mountain West faithful, the dream of attaining automatic qualifying (AQ) status for the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has ended. On Tuesday, the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee denied the conference’s request for a waiver that would have given the Mountain West an automatic bid for post-season play in the lucrative BCS for the 2012 and 2013 seasons.
Though it was considered a long shot for the conference to attain AQ status, it was a disappointment considering the recent success of conference powerhouses TCU and Boise State. Some speculate that the Mountain West was denied AQ status because TCU left the conference this summer to join the Big 12 and Boise State is scheduled to head for the Big East in 2013.
The last conference to attain AQ exemption was the Big East in 2007. When granting exemption, the BCS looks at the average ranking of the conferences’ highest ranked teams in the BCS, the number of qualifying top 25 teams, and the average ranking of all conference teams. It is presumed that with the departure of TCU and ultimately Boise State, the Mountain West could not meet the BCS criteria.
As it stands, there are six conference with automatic BCS bids: SEC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac-12, ACC and Big East. With the new four-team playoff system going into effect come 2014, this will only prove to be a brief setback for the Mountain West.
