I mean, what if in three years there were no automatic BCS bids that go to a conference champion? What if the BCS games took its 10 teams based on the BCS rankings? What if there were no BCS games and in their place just a title game and the old school bowls? Wouldn’t this arms race we’ve witnessed in the past 24 months, the one where many schools made decisions about their future because a move either created or enhanced an opportunity for a BCS bid and a national championship dream, seem a little … I don’t know … misguided?

Well, don’t look now, but the BCS gets its next makeover in 2014 and there is already considerable chatter about doing away with the AQ concept.

You might see the same set of games pick from the top 10 teams. You may see a sixth game added and 12 teams invited. You might see five or six games get to pick from a top 18. You might see just a BCS title game and, um, chaos after it.

But if the Big 12 champion doesn’t automatically go to the Fiesta Bowl, and the Big 12 champion is No. 11 in the BCS one season, then everything we’ve been watching happen, every justification we’ve heard and accepted, doesn’t make as much sense, right?

You’re WVU, for example. You were legitimately and understandably worried the Big East might lose its AQ status. But now if everyone loses the AQ status, you could make just as legitimate and understandable an argument that you have a better chance to exit a season with a top-10 BCS ranking in the proposed new system by playing through the Big East than you do by playing through the Big 12. Imagine that.

West Virginia has finished in the BCS standings six times since 2002, with an average ranking of 14.3 (the high was ninth in 2007).

In those six seasons that WVU appeared, however, there have been a total of 11 appearances in the standings ahead of WVU by schools that will join the Mountaineers in the Big 12 in 2012-13 (that’s WVU’s desire).

In this week’s BCS standings, six of the 10 “future” Big 12 teams appear (Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Kansas State, TCU, Baylor, Texas), while a 7-3 West Virginia (nor any other Big East team) is in that top 25.