Posted by ESPN.com’s Graham Watson

After Saturday’s 54-28 loss to Florida State, BYU quarterback Max Hall acknowledged that his team knew what was at stake. It knew that a potential BCS bowl berth and perhaps even consideration for a national championship was out there for the taking with a win over the Seminoles and that a loss would take it all away.

BYU had more pressure on it in the third week of the season than several teams have in the 12th. That’s because under the current BCS system, teams such as BYU, despite an impressive win over Oklahoma and a high ranking, still have to remain undefeated to earn something that is guaranteed to teams with less impressive résumés.

“It does put an awful lot of pressure and focus on them, and that’s one of the things that I think is illustrative of the injustice of the system is that they have to be flawless,” Mountain West deputy commissioner Bret Gilliland said prior to BYU’s loss to Florida State. “A team out of our league, or any of the nonautomatic qualifying conference, has to be flawless, has be perfect, can’t make a mistake. Unlike the AQs, they can stumble a couple times, two three, four losses, and they’re still going to have that automatic BCS berth at the end of the season. That, to me, is part of the whole dynamic that makes this a little bit more of a microscope maybe than is fair.”

The rules for a nonautomatic qualifier to earn a BCS bowl berth aren’t new. Each of the five non-AQ conferences knew them and has signed off on them whether they agree with them or not. The conference still has two undefeated teams in Colorado State and TCU, but once conference play begins, the teams could start to knock each other out of BCS bowl contention. Still, it’s a rare occasion that a non-AQ team knocks off the No. 3 team in the country and still has at least three or four high-level teams remaining on its schedule.

And Florida State could end up being an OK loss for the Cougars. The Seminoles were a last-second catch away from being highly ranked, and Miami, the team they lost to, has proven that it’s one of the better teams in the country.

Credit voters for not treating BYU much differently in the polls than it treated teams such as Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and USC. BYU plunged 12 spots in the recently released AP poll, which is on par with where those other teams dropped after their losses. And BYU has a chance to make up ground with a quality conference schedule that opens with 3-0 Colorado State this weekend and has No. 15 TCU and a tough Utah team remaining.

But even winning out the rest of the season might not be enough to earn the Cougars their first BCS bowl berth. With Boise State poised for yet another undefeated regular season, BYU has to hope that Florida State continues to play well and voters take into account not only the Cougars quality wins, but also what could turn out to be a quality loss. That could get the Cougars above the No. 12 ranking in the BCS standings that they need to be considered for an automatic berth.

“This is a pattern,” Gilliland said. “We’ve been performing. We hope to continue to perform. So it’s not as if it’s a cosmic occurrence.

“Because of the way the system is arguably stacked against us, you have to be perfect. No nonautomatic qualifying team has made a BCS game or had a shot at the national championship game without being perfect. You do have that concern. But we have very good teams in this league… We think given the right circumstances, that a one-loss team out of this conference, with the resume that they will have, is a legitimate contender to get into a BCS game and be above that 12 threshold.”