TCU and previous BCS-busters Boise State and Utah have proved on the field that their conferences deserve shots at automatic bids to the premium, high-dollar bowl games. And here is a new, simple way to reward them: If a team from a non-BCS conference wins a BCS bowl game, then its conference moves into the group of leagues getting automatic bids the following year.

For example, because of TCU's 21-19 win over Wisconsin in Saturday's Rose Bowl, the Mountain West Conference would get an automatic bid to a 2012 BCS game.

Freeing up a spot in the BCS would be simple. Calculate the BCS standings one more time after all of the bowls have been played. The BCS conference whose highest-ranked team in the post-bowl BCS standings is lowest would lose its automatic bid the next year. This year, that likely would be the Big East, whose trio of co-champions has so far lost in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and the Champs Sports Bowl and has Pitt left to play in the BBVA Compass Bowl on Saturday.

A team in a league that lost its automatic bid could still get in by qualifying the same way that a team from a non-BCS league can now.

This proposal would reward the BCS busters while forcing mediocre conferences such as the Big East to either get better or quit wasting football fans' time in the premium bowls.

Had this system been in place this year, the ultimate in ironies would have occurred: TCU would have put the Mountain West into the 2012 BCS and the Big East's automatic bid would have been surrendered. And TCU plays in the Big East next season.

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