The Mountain West Conference continued celebrating its 10th birthday last weekend by blowing out four more candles: UCLA, Stanford, Arizona and Arizona State.
"We had a good week," Commissioner Craig Thompson said of his league's 4-0 cakewalk against the Pacific 10 Conference.
Actually, it was a dream week, but Thompson didn't want to puff out his chest too far.
"One week out of 10 years doesn't make you a BCS conference," he said. "But it's one of those weekends that we must continue to have."
Brigham Young beat UCLA, 59-0, Texas Christian stymied Stanford, Nevada Las Vegas shocked Arizona State, and New Mexico upended Arizona.
The week before, Brigham Young beat Washington. The week before that, Utah won at Michigan.
Results, though, don't change rules.
Thompson doesn't expect college football's power structure to teeter until 2014 -- at the earliest.
The Mountain West was born in 1999, a year after the Bowl Championship Series was created and the higher-ups established the parameters. The Mountain West got in, Thompson says, "after the train left the station."
Ten years later, there are still six conferences whose champions receive automatic bids to the four major bowls and five conferences whose champions don't.
The five that don't -- Mountain West, Western Athletic, Mid-American, Conference USA and Sun Belt -- are left to scrap for four at-large berths.
The five that don't are required to jump through qualification hoops. Their champion must finish in the top 12 of the final BCS standings or be top 16 if they're ranked ahead of a BCS conference champion.
The Pac-10, Big Ten, Southeastern, Atlantic Coast, Big 12 and Big East conferences wrote the manual, and the rest of the conferences abide by it.
To avoid litigation, and possible Congressional intervention, the BCS conferences loosened the rules and threw more money down to the mail room, but they didn't solve the potential inequity.
Utah, in 2004, had to finish in the top six to earn its way in, and hit its target on the number. Access has since been relaxed -- but the top-12 spot is only guaranteed for one team.
This is shaping up to be the best year ever for schools outside the six-conference power structure.
Brigham Young sits at No. 14 in the Associated Press media poll this week, followed by No. 15 East Carolina of Conference USA. Fresno State is No. 25 and Texas Christian, Tulsa, Ball State, Boise State are receiving votes.
