Damn Boise

Boise State cannot catch a break.

Not only are they likely to get shut-out of the National Championship game this year, in spite of having gone 3 regular seasons without a loss and 2 years since losing a game, they can't even move into a better conference.

Yes, next year they join the Mountain West, but Utah is leaving for the new Pac-12. BYU is going independent. Now, TCU might join the Big East. That will leave the Broncos in a conference as weak and irrelevant as the WAC they just left.

But it gets worse... After next season the BCS reevaluates the automatic qualifying conferences. If Boise, Utah, and TCU were all in the Mountain West together, they might have been able to edge out the Big East for the 6th spot. According to the BCS wikipedia page, the final rankings for the 2008-2011 seasons will be looked at for each conference and evaluated based on the rank of the highest-ranked team, rank of all conference teams, and number of teams in the top 25.

The Mountain West as it exists today clearly has the edge on the Big East. If you add Boise's rankings (and I'm not sure how they handle changes in conference makeup), the Mountain West blows the Big East out of the water. If they'd just been patient and stayed where they were (and added Boise), the Mountain West could have become a BCS conference in 2 years. Instead Utah and TCU will join AQ conferences and leave Boise swinging in the breeze.