The
Mountain West and Western Athletic Conference Champions
to square off on Championship Saturday 2010
November
12, 2009 - The
Mountain West Conference (MWC) and the Western Athletic
Conference (WAC) are closing in on a deal that will
send the football champion of each respective conference
to a Championship Game against each other the first
weekend of December much like the ACC, Big 12, SEC,
C-USA and MAC currently have in place. The
game would be played at a predetermined neutral facility.
Since
the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences currently
lack enough teams to maintain a Championship Game structure
as individual leagues, the logical choice among each
school's presidents was to let the champions of each
league square off with a chance for the winner to be
represented in the current BCS bowl process.
No
guarantee with BCS officials has been made to secure
an automatic BCS bowl bid for the winner of the MWC/WAC
Championship Game and naming rights for the game are
yet to be determined. Despite lacking a current agreement
with BCS officials, the game would at the least alleviate
some of the strength of schedule difficulties hampering
schools from both conferences.
Had
the deal been put into place this season, the possibility
that TCU (currently ranked No. 4 in the BCS Poll) and
Boise State (currently ranked No. 6) would square off
on December 5 could have been a stunning reality assuming
both continue to win out. TCU will face No. 16 Utah
this Saturday in Fort Worth while Boise State will host
Idaho.
BCS
representatives continue to receive criticism from non-aligned
BCS conferences that they are not getting a fair shake
in the bowl selection process. This week Texas head
coach Mack Brown spoke out in support of schools not
getting an equal chance at receiving an automatic BCS
bid. While the MWC/WAC Championship Game would not necessarily
place the BCS selection process on a level playing field,
it would at least help solve some of the scheduling
problems that mid-major schools face.
This
week the Idaho
Statesman released an article claiming
that Boise State was having difficulty finding non-conference
opponents for 2011. Several high-profile programs have
turned down a chance to play a home game against Boise
State in 2011, WAC commissioner Karl Benson said Tuesday.
Benson isn't sure of the exact number of schools that
have said no, but figures it is close to 10. The Broncos
aren't asking for any games in Boise in return, he said.
Boise State
has taken a great deal of criticism from the media for
having such a light schedule this season. Their scheduling
plight could keep the Broncos out of a BCS bowl. Not
one of Boise State's 13 regular season games has been
selected for a prime time Saturday television broadcast
by the major networks. The Broncos however will open
the 2010 season with Virginia Tech at FedEx Field in
Landover, MD next Labor Day, a deal that ESPN helped
to bring toward fruition.
Of
course, the story you have just read is only a proposal
by NationalChamps.net. No such agreement currently exists
between the MWC and WAC for a Championship Game. The
logic is that mid-major programs have to do more to
help themselves as opposed to waiting for the BCS decision
makers to rule in their favor. But this would be a step
in the right direction.
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