Conference realignment a' go-go Pt. III

... and most likely the last one for this year.

As the newest member of the Pac-10, the Utes will be playing for a guaranteed spot in one of college football's elite bowl games rather than hoping to sneak in with an at-large berth -- as they've done twice before.

Utah officially joined the Pac-10 on Thursday, leaving the Mountain West Conference for the prestige and more lucrative opportunities of a league where things such as the Heisman Trophy, Final Four and national titles are distinct possibilities instead of long shots.

This is a huge blow to the Mountain West Conference, who just last week, in apptempting to stay out in front of the realignment a' go-go bow wave, poached Boise St. from the WAC thus giving them 4 legit top-25 football programs (BYU, TCU and Utah being the others) in their now-snuffed-out 10 team conference. Instead of moving towards an automatic BCS bowl bid for their conference, they're back to also-ran status. As Pac 10 honks, we do feel for fans of the Mountain - the little conference that almost did.

This looks to be the last move for 2010. Again, what looked like the apocalypse as recently as a week ago, has resulted in only a 5.6 shaker. No permanent damage but you were still talking about it the next day at the cooler.

Business as usual

We apologize for not getting to this sooner but believe it or not, it kind of flew beneath our radar.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called hearings last week to address the possibility that the BCS violates federal anti-trust laws because of its “exclusionary” method of selecting teams in which to play in the “fictitious national title game.”

The tipping point for setting up these hearings was the Utah Utes going undefeated last season and getting shut out of the title game, settling instead for the Sugar Bowl where they smacked by two touchdowns an Alabama team that was ranked #1 in the nation before going into their previous game.

Of course, we all know what you are saying: “Don’t these guys have better things to worry about than college football?” We’ll respond by saying that Hatch was the only member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to attend these hearings as the other Senators were busy concocting new ways of ruining the economy via cap and trade and health care reform so we’ll let you reconsider the answer to your own question.

This has all been rendered pretty much moot however as the two hold-out conferences that had not signed the new TV deal with ESPN (a defacto submission to BCS servitude), the WAC and the conference that Utah belongs to, the Mountain West, inked the deal that will have the Network broadcasting the BCS games through the 2014 season.

This came despite strong objections to the BCS power structure by the Mountain West who developed an 8-team playoff format earlier this spring that was, as expected, ignored by the BCS.

The roll-over by the two conferences was best summed up by Boise St. president, Bob Kustra.

"We have no choice," Boise State president Bob Kustra said after the WAC presidents voted unanimously to sign the deal. "The repercussions were just too dramatic and too costly."

How about “complete irrelevance” as well. That’s the power that the BCS now wields.

The BCS-haters (including ourselves) can bitch and moan all they want about the unfairness and overall lameness of the system but when Masada is girded for battle and its defenders, instead, conscript with the Roman army, there is not any more room for righteous indignation.