Schools in the five Division I-A conferences not affiliated with the Bowl Championship Series say college football’s postseason setup is unfair. Teams from the six BCS conferences get 78 percent of the bowl bids and about 94 percent of the $182 million in bowl revenue.
But some of the non-BCS teams are making a strong case for inclusion by their performances on the field.
In the first three weeks of the 2003 season, the non-BCS conferences (Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, Sun Belt and Western Athletic) have posted 18 wins against their BCS brothers. Some of those wins were pretty impressive:
Northern Illinois of the MAC beat Maryland, an ACC team.
Bowling Green, also of the MAC, won at Purdue 27-26.
Louisville of Conference USA marched into the Carrier Dome in Syracuse and won 30-20.
Louisiana Tech of the Sun Belt went into Big Ten country and beat Michigan State 20-19 in East Lansing.
UNLV went into Camp Randall Stadium and handled then-No. 20 Wisconsin 23-5.
The BCS leagues are still dominant, a combined 55-18 against the non-BCS upstarts, and there remains a significant gap between the top of the big-boy conferences and the non-BCS leagues. Oklahoma toyed with North Texas 37-3 and Fresno State 52-28. Miami rolled over Louisiana Tech 48-9 and East Carolina 38-3.
“We concede that there is a difference between maybe the top 10 or 20 teams in the nation and the kind of teams we might be putting on the field,” said Craig Thompson, commissioner of the Mountain West Conference. “But after that I think it’s a coin flip. There is very little difference between the middle of the BCS conferences and us.”
But the relative competitiveness of the football is really not relevant in this debate. The BCS conferences get most of the goodies because history says they can deliver larger crowds to the games and bigger television ratings to the networks. Those entities would rather have a 7-5 Purdue team than a 10-1 team from Bowling Green.
Overdue honor: Jerry LeVias, the first African-American to play football at Southern Methodist and receive a football scholarship at a Southwest Conference school, will he honored at halftime of Saturday’s game against Oklahoma State in Dallas. LeVias will be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in December.
