Another thought on expansion rumors

[UVACoug]

The BCS promises to give an autobid if the Mountain West can put together a conference with these specific teams, and then one of the BCS conferences raids the Mountain West to prevent that from happening.

Not sure how that can happen because the pac10 is the 'bcs". they can't make an agreement and then undermine it without breaching it. This can't happen if the BCS has indeed made an agreement to included mwc if they do certain things. IN addition, imagien the political ramification this creates for the BCS is those types of moves were made public. Not going to happen.

Sure they can. They agreement is conditional and there is nothing to stop the BCS (or one of its member conferences) from trying to prevent the condition from occurring. They don't get hurt in the PR department because they are giving access to the best teams outside the BCS and they have a good justification for leaving the remaining teams out (your conference isn't good enough).

"Simple game theory" only makes sense if the assumptions are correct. I dont' think the assumption that the pac 10 would only want one more team makes sense, especially if its only BSU even if they are only trying to 'conspire' to ruin the mwc auto bid deal. What does this do for them?

Furthermore, BSU and Utah in your scenario both know that if they both join mwc they get their auto bid and don't have to play teams like usc to get to a bcs bowl game each year. What is BSU, UTAH, TCU and BYU's record against pac10 teams? In a few years of being in the BCS the MWC conference could be stronger than the Pac10. I think there is may be less uncertainty of an assured auto bid than you are assuming. Assuming there is more upside to joining a mwc with an auto bid than going alone to the pac10 by yourself (something that could be argued either way), I think that the opposite would happen even if a few of the bcs conferences implemented this conspiracy you speak of.

The point of the game theory example is not that there is only one spot available in Pac-10 expansion. It is to explain why Utah would accept an invitation to the Pac-10 rather than hold out with hopes that the MWC gets an autobid. The same principle applies if there are 2 or 3 spots available. Imagine there are two spots, and BYU, Utah, and Boise State get invitations. Do you think BYU accepts and takes the guaranteed autobid or holds out, knowing that it is likely that Utah and BSU will accept in its place? Without Utah and Boise State, there is a very slim chance that the MWC gets an autobid.