How Does The MWC, BYU, WAC Soap Opera Affect The ACC?

I must say this has been a nice change of pace. It's nice to sit back and watch the college football landscape get completely re-written with Boston College and the Atlantic Coast Conference standing safely at a distance. So the question becomes what, if any, impact does this Mountain West-WAC-BYU soap opera have on the ACC?

The answer: not much.

Aside from the intriguing possibility of new Mountain West teams like Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada facing an ACC team in the Independence Bowl, there's not a whole lot here. That is, other than any impact these moves may have on the BCS. 

If the Mountain West can come out of this whole mess marginally better than they were at football, the conference may still have an outside shot at becoming the seventh conference to earn an auto-berth in the BCS. As Team Speed Kills points out, the BCS criteria that the MWC needs the most help on is the average finish of all teams in the BCS computer polls. If BYU sticks with the MWC, and the conference loses Utah but adds Fresno State and Nevada, they would improve their average finish in the BCS ever so slightly, increasing the chances that they'll earn a BCS auto-berth.

While the Mountain West isn't a serious threat to earn that seventh BCS auto-bid, it's also not completely out of the question. If BYU stays and the MWC targets Houston as the 12th team, the potential upside of the Houston football program, combined with BYU, TCU and Boise State at the top of the conference's football heap could be enough to get the MWC over their BCS auto-bid hump.

If the MWC becomes that seventh automatic qualifying conference, assuming the current BCS system remains as is, this would mean a drop in BCS revenue for the ACC. The BCS would give a much larger portion of the revenue to the MWC, thereby decreasing the ACC's take.

This also would mean one less opportunity for the ACC to sneak a second team into college football's big money BCS bowl games. But then again, this has yet to happen. I guess we'll cross that bridge when the conference gets there.