MWC proposes BCS tournament

If the Mountain West Conference has its way, the structure of postseason college football will look more like the NCAA basketball tournament and less like the Bowl Championship Series.

As promised two weeks ago, the MWC publicly released Wednesday a detailed proposal to reform the BCS format, including the creation of an eight-team playoff. Commissioner Craig Thompson, along with four university leaders from the league, discussed and answered questions about the proposal on a conference call.

"We all believe that change is needed. The current system is not fair and somebody needs to stand up and say that and ask for a dialogue amongst all of the parties involved," said Tom Buchanan, University of Wyoming President and Chair of the MWC Board of Directors.

"We can't promote change without offering some alternatives. I think that's what we've done with this proposal we've put forward ... Our goal is to find a system that's best for college football."

Among the proposals:

— Changing the criteria for determining automatically qualifying conferences through on-field performance. A Football Bowl Subdivision conference would become an automatic qualifier "if over a two-season period the conference (1) has played a minimum of twenty inter-conference regular-season games against he six current automatic qualifying conferences and (2) has a minimum winning percentage of .400 in these games," according to the proposal.

Under that criteria, the MWC would earn an automatic BCS bid because it has posted a 16-13 record (.552) against automatically qualifying conferences the past two seasons.

Currently, only the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10 and Southeastern Conferences are automatic qualifiers. Five other leagues — the MWC, WAC, Conference USA, Sun Belt and MAC — do not have an automatic berth to the BCS.

— Creating a 12-member selection committee to formulate the BCS standings instead of human polls and computer rankings. The committee would be similar in function to the basketball selection committee that evaluates teams and sets up the NCAA Tournament pairings and seedings.

— Devising a playoff allowing "deserving" teams the opportunity to compete for the national championship. It would feature five BCS bowls, including the Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar, to be played the first week of January. The fifth BCS game would be awarded to a bowl that currently hosts a non-BCS game.