227's YouTube "Chili"-BCS Conference From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search "BCS conference" is a term used to describe two groups of college athletic conferences. The usage of the term differs radically between that of the Bowl Championship Series, the quasi-official championship system for NCAA Division I FBS college football, and that of most sports media and fans in the United States. [edit] Popular usage Most sports media and college football fans consider the term to refer specifically to the six conferences whose champions receive automatic berths to the five bowl games that are part of the BCS system, if they have a 10-2 record or better. After the two top teams in the BCS rankings are matched up in the BCS National Championship Game, the other four bowls select other top teams. Each of the bowls has a historic link with one or more of the six conferences (apart from the Big East), and selects a team from said conference if it is eligible for a BCS bowl and not playing in the championship game. The conferences cited as part of this group, with their traditional bowl links, are: Atlantic Coast Conference (Orange Bowl) Big 12 Conference (Fiesta Bowl) Big East Conference (not tied to any specific BCS bowl) Big Ten Conference (Rose Bowl) Pacific-10 Conference (Rose Bowl) Southeastern Conference (Sugar Bowl) Notre Dame remains an independent in football, despite otherwise being a member of the Big East, but is included with the above conferences because it has guaranteed access to the BCS bowls when it meets certain defined performance criteria. Recently, some media outlets, especially ESPN, have begun using the term "AQ", for "automatic qualifier", to describe the above group of teams, as well as "non-AQ" to describe FBS schools that are outside of this group. This term has support in the BCS' sense of "BCS conference", discussed below. The term is generally used in college football (the sport, of course, from which it was derived), though it is often applied to all collegiate sports. In some sports, such as college basketball or with the exception of the Big East and Big Ten, college baseball, these conferences are also called the Power Conferences. [edit] BCS usage In stark contrast to the popular usage of the term, the BCS considers all 120 members of Division I FBS to be a part of the BCS system, stating on its official website, “ The media and others often mis-use this term. All 11 conferences in the Football Bowl Subdivision are "BCS Conferences."[1] ” Of these teams, 117 are members of one of 11 conferences; the other three are "independent" schools that are not part of a conference. The BCS system is broken up into two separate types of conferences: Automatic Qualifying (AQ) Conferences and Non-Automatic Qualifying (non-AQ) Conferences. The champions of the six conferences discussed in the previous section receive automatic bids to BCS bowl games, regardless of their BCS ranking. The other 5 conferences (listed below) are considered non-AQ conferences or "mid-major" conferences because they do not receive an annual automatic bid to a BCS bowl game. The highest ranking team of the non-AQ conferences will receive an AQ bid if they are ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS poll or ranked in the top 16 and higher than a champion of an AQ conference. [2] The conferences in this group are:[3] Conference USA Mid-American Conference Mountain West Conference Sun Belt Conference Western Athletic Conference The two independents other than Notre Dame, namely Army and Navy, are also non-AQs. The four non-AQ teams to have appeared in BCS bowls are: Utah, MWC — defeated Pittsburgh 35–7 in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl Boise State, WAC — defeated Oklahoma 43–42 in overtime in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl Hawaiʻi, WAC — lost to Georgia 41–10 in the 2008 Sugar Bowl Utah, MWC — defeated Alabama 31–17 in the 2009 Sugar Bowl TCU, MWC lost to Boise State, WAC 17-10 in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl Note that both Utah and Boise State have multiple appearances. [edit] References ^ http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfb/faq ^ http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfb/eligibility ^ http://www.bcsfootball.org/bcsfb/conferences Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BCS_conference" Categories: BCS conferences | Bowl Championship Series
 

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