The Mountain West Conference has requested an automatic qualification for the next two bowl seasons. Frankly, I am not aware of the rules/requirements for a current non-AQ conference to become eligible as an AQ conference. I hope to find this out over the next few weeks, as I plan on coming back to how conferences play against each other over the last few seasons toward the end of January. I will look at how they compare head-to-head, overall and against only BCS conference opponents.
For now let's just take a look at how the Mountain West Conference has fared against BCS opponents both during the regular and bowl games from 2008 to 2010 - the time period the Mountain West is using in making their AQ request. (I will look at this for this year later.)
In 2008, the Mountain West Conference was 10-15 against BCS opponents for a winning percentage of 0.667.
In 2009, the Mountain West Conference was 6-15 against BCS opponents for a winning percentage of 0.400.
In 2010, the Mountain West Conference was 6-14 against BCS opponents for a winning percentage of 0.429.
That is a 0.500 record against BCS opponents over those three years. Think about that - the Mountain West Conference has won as many games as they have lost over those three years against BCS conferences.