| While we at Ohio are debating the wisdom of our athletic department's scheduling philosophy, MWC Commissioner, Craig Thompson, is warning his schools against "overscheduling":
From today's Albuquerque Journal: http://www.abqjournal.com/sports/live/component/content/article/19-lobo-football/5695-schedule-with-care.html
" While the University of New Mexico looks to play more big-name football opponents in the near future, Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson on Wednesday warned the league not to overschedule.
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Thompson said the Mountain West's quest for inclusion among the Bowl Championship Series automatic qualifying conferences hinges on the collective results of the teams' nonconference schedules.
The MWC each year must rank in the top six Division I-A leagues in three criteria to become an automatic qualifying conference: its highest-ranked team by the BCS and the number of top-25 teams in the final BCS standings, and the collective regular-season computer rankings of all conference teams.
The league is sixth in two of the three, but seventh in the collective conference computer rankings.
"Everything is focused on your top team or teams," Thompson said, but "your six, seven, eight, nine finishes are important, too. You've got to have that overall strength in the nine.
"My message is, you have new coaches in new positions and I think some of our people in 11 years (since the MWC's inception) overschedule."
The MWC can apply for a waiver from a presidential oversight committee for automatic-qualifying status to become a seventh BCS conference for 2012-13. The league has two more years in the current BCS cycle to elevate its standing.
"You can't dictate (programs to) win," but the most important piece of this whole aspect is the 36 nonconference games -- nine teams, four nonconference games each."
Thompson doesn't mind that the MWC has become a top-heavy league since TCU joined in 2005. TCU, Brigham Young and Utah are a combined 80-10 against the rest of the league since then. None of the other teams has beaten the "Big Three" the past two seasons.
"The No. 1 criteria of the three is the having a highest-ranked team. So right now, we need to have a dominant team or two."
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