Outsiders Bidding to Crash BCS Bash

The Bowl Championship Series is designed to reward college football's six richest and most renowned conferences with opportunities to showcase their best teams at the end of the season under the guise that those teams are in fact the best in the country. After handing out six automatic berths to each of those conference's champions, the BCS may dole out one of its remaining at-large bids to a member of a non-BCS conference. But probably only one. Regardless of circumstance.

This season, three non-BCS conference teams -- Boise State, Utah and Texas Christian -- are clustered in the top half of the rankings, yet there is a good chance that only one will play in a BCS bowl. The champions from the Big East and ACC, on the other hand, may finish much further down in the rankings and still be ushered into one of the sport's five premier bowls.

At 8-0, Boise State stands the best chance of those three teams to finish the regular season undefeated. Its most challenging remaining game is the season finale against Fresno State, which is 5-3. Should the Broncos go undefeated, they likely would remain in the top 12 of the BCS standings and thus qualify for one of the 10 BCS bowl berths.

Utah hosts TCU on Thursday night, and although a loss for either team would knock it out of the BCS top 12, it still likely would leave it ahead of the Big East and ACC leaders. TCU is 9-1, its lone loss coming at Oklahoma. Utah is 9-0 and still must face Brigham Young in its regular season finale.

Meanwhile, the top-ranked teams in the ACC are North Carolina, Maryland and Georgia Tech. Each of those teams has two losses, and none of those losses came against opponents that currently are ranked. It is not out of the question to think that the ACC champion will carry at least three losses into its BCS bowl game.

The same is true in the Big East, where West Virginia and Pittsburgh, the conference's top two teams, also have two losses apiece. South Florida (6-3), the Big East favorite heading into the season, dropped out of the Associated Press top 25 poll on Sunday after a loss to Cincinnati on Thursday. Cincinnati, an unranked squad, remains in Big East title contention.

Parity -- heavily prevalent in both the ACC and Big East this year -- does not always equal quality. The BCS, however, does not take that into account when determining which teams will play in its five bowls. At least one team -- but no more than two -- from each of the six BCS conferences will play in a BCS bowl, even if some of those squads are undeserving of such recognition.

For Boise State, Utah and TCU, that probably means two of those three squads will be stuck playing in a lesser bowl. Because they reside in conferences deemed inferior by the BCS, they will continue to battle for what may be just one available spot when two or three might be more appropriate.