It’s doing what it can to help one of the top Mountain West Conference teams get the wins necessary to qualify for a Bowl Championship Series postseason game.

TCU, currently ranked No. 12 in the lastest Associated Press poll and No. 8 in the USA Today Coaches poll, has the mantle for the MWC’s hope of getting a BCS game.

The Horned Frogs, however, are behind Boise State (No. 5 AP, No. 6 Coaches poll) for the automatic spot for the top non-BCS member that finishes in the top 12 of the final BCS rankings, which come out next week for the first time this year.

It’s conceivable that the BCS could invite two non-BCS schools to BCS games, but unlikely.

Of course, the letters B-C-S are still taboo to TCU coach Gary Patterson, who faces Colorado State this week followed by the marquee conference matchup with Brigham Young (No. 18 AP).

“I’ll tell you what, the competition is so tough that we don’t have time to think about the BCS,” Patterson said Tuesday during the MWC teleconference. “Right now, we have all we want with the Rams of Colorado State. The BCS stuff is good for everyobdy, we haven’t even had a BCS standings yet. Right now, I’ve told everybody that we had to get through the first seven ballgames. If we were more successful than not, maybe we could have conversations about it. But with CSU and BYU the next two weeks, we better keep our noses down because that’s a lot of football.”

BYU (5-1) and Utah (4-1, No. 24) should help TCU’s cause if they can keep winning — and conveniently lose to the Horned Frogs head-to-head. TCU’s strength of schedule could help it leapfrog Boise State.

The Broncos don’t have a strong fellow Western Athletic Conference member to bolster its strength of schedule.

While the BCS continues to hammer the point that the MWC isn’t as strong from top to bottom as its member conferences, which is why the league is on the outside looking in, it might be better for the Mountain West to have the big three and the little six to give it a team that can compete for a BCS game on an annual basis.

Utah coach Kyle Whittingham was asked whether it was better for the conference if the other teams emerged to challenge the big three.

“I’d rather have nobody emerge but us,” Whittingham said. “It seems like if there’s parity and you beat up on each other, that doesn’t do you any good on a national scene. If you don’t have a team or two or three getting the majority of the wins, if everybody’s competitive, you end up 5-3 in the conference with your champion. It’s probably healthier for the conference but not for the big picture.”

The have-nots in the MWC, as you might imagine, have a different response.

“It’s always a good thing (to have three ranked teams)” San Diego State coach Brady Hoke said when asked whether it was a good thing for the Aztecs if the conference had three ranked teams. “We’ve got a brotherhood, or whatever you want to call it, with this conference. The conference on a national scale is important to all of us. It’s great to have three ranked teams; it’s great to have that caliber of coaches and caliber of players.”

But it seems to be great for the MWC to have a limited number of great coaches and players that belong to a limited number of teams until the UNMs, the SDSUs and the UNLVs of the world can start beating their non-conference BCS foes.

Until that happens, it’s good — at least for the conference — to have the Lobos to kick around.