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Updated: February 23, 2009, 4:42 PM ET
By Graham Watson
ESPN.com


Western Athletic Conference Commissioner Karl Benson was the only commissioner from a non-automatic qualifying conference on Craig Thompson's conference call last Friday.

And he hung up early.

After Thompson, the Mountain West Conference commissioner, explained that his plight was only for his own conference and not the rest of the non-automatic qualifying schools, a computer voice came over the line that said Benson had left the conference.

It wasn't intentional. Benson left the teleconference early because he was on vacation with family and friends, but the tone his abrupt departure set was not unlike the feeling he and his counterparts felt when they heard of Thompson's visit to Capitol Hill.

"I've never been very optimistic that any of the five conferences would be able to achieve automatic status," Benson said. "It would take four years of extraordinary performance to get there. ... In the first four-year cycle, neither the WAC nor the Mountain West weren't even close [to gaining automatic status]. That was based on Utah's 2004 season, Boise State's 2004, Boise State's 2006 and Hawaii 2007. I think that the formula requires a conference to have strength not just from the top, but the middle and the bottom. Where the group of five conferences is disadvantaged is that we may have strength at the top, but we have teams in the bottom halves of the leagues that will bring down those conference averages."

Benson said the BCS system might always be a little unfair for the non-automatic qualifying schools, but it's also been more than generous. During the past three seasons, the non-automatic qualifying leagues have netted around $55 million thanks to the efforts of Utah, Boise State and Hawaii. Non-BCS conferences get $3 million for being part of the BCS, money that commissioners like Benson and Sun Belt Commissioner Wright Waters said goes toward funding other sports.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3928879
not a single one of the BCS conferences can claim strength from top to bottom. the BCS is a bunch of bull****.
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