At the end of last month I blogged about the NCAA's criteria for a 7th automatic qualifying conference. Using the NCAA's criteria (which I state here), I then calculated each conference rank for those three criteria. For a conference to automatically qualify for a BCS bowl game, they would have to finish in the top 6 of the first two criteria and be within 50% of the top conference for the third criteria. Here are the blogs about criteria #1 (with the final conference ranking), criteria #2 (with the final conference ranking) and criteria #3 (with the final conference ranking and values).
Let's see how the Mountain West Conference fared: For the first criteria the Mountain West finished #4, but finished #7 for the second criteria and finished above 50% of the first conference (SEC) for the third criteria. So, the Mountain West finished one spot short to become an automatic qualifier.
The NCAA also allowed a conference to petition an exception to the Presidential Oversight Committee if a conference finished in the top 7 in the first two criteria and the top 5 in the other of the first two criteria (which the Mountain West Conference achieved) and was within 33.3% of the SEC in the third criteria, which the Mountain West Conference achieved. The Mountain West Conference petitioned for an exemption to the Presidential Oversight Committee and was refused.
But here's the rub: while the Mountain West Conference does not meet the criteria for a seventh automatic qualifying conference, NEITHER does the ACC or the Big East which both are automatic qualifiers.
For the Big East conference, according to my calculations, they do not meet criteria #1 or #3, nor do they meet the criteria for the exemption that the Mountain West Conference DOES meet!
For the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), they fail to meet criteria #3, but do meet the exemption criteria.
So the ACC and Big East remain BCS automatic qualifiers, but are no better (ACC) or worse (Big East) than the Mountain West Conference.