College football's Bowl Championship Series may be headed for a turbulent offseason.

Already under attack from various congressmen and elected state officials — many calling for a playoff — the BCS also must address escalating internal dissent.

Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson said Friday that the league will submit a proposal to modify the 11-year-old system, looking among other things to give teams like undefeated Utah a better shot at reaching the national championship game.

In the meantime, Thompson said, the Mountain West is holding off on signing the BCS' newly negotiated, four-year contract with ESPN, which is scheduled to go into effect after next season.

The league also has taken its case to Washington. Thompson visited the offices of selected House and Senate members Thursday and Friday, and the Mountain West has hired a prominent Washington law and lobbying firm.

"We're going to take our stand, make our case, propose change. You can't change something if there's nothing to look at and compare to," said Thompson, who is working in concert with the presidents of the MWC's nine member schools.

"Yeah, certainly, we're not the most popular kid in the room. I understand that. But we feel that we are trying to help college football fans and basically institute a more equitable system for the entire populace of college football."

He declined to reveal specifics of the proposal, which Thompson said he'll forward to the BCS in the next two weeks.

"I don't know how the proposal will be received," he said.

The issue of access to the more than $145 million BCS and its five games — four top-tier bowls and the annual title game — has simmered for years. It bubbled over in the Mountain West last season, when league champion Utah emerged as the nation's lone unbeaten team and co-members Texas Christian and Brigham Young also ranked among the BCS' top 16 teams at the end of the regular season.

Utah landed in the BCS-affiliated Sugar Bowl, where the Utes defeated Alabama 31-17. But that berth was conditional.

Champions of the nation's six marquee conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific 10 and Southeastern — automatically qualify for the BCS each year. Winners of the five other major-college conferences, including the Mountain West, must meet minimum-ranking guidelines to get in.

Utah didn't come close to qualifying for the BCS' national championship game, finishing No. 6 in the final regular-season standings that incorporate both polls and computer rankings. The Nos. 1 and 2 teams advance, and they were Oklahoma and eventual champion Florida, even though both had lost once during the regular season.

Utah also was shut out of the championship game despite a perfect record in 2004, though that season produced three other undefeated teams and the Utes landed in the BCS' Fiesta Bowl.

"Our presidents," Thompson said, "feel that our performance over the last four, five, six years warrants inclusion at a different level than it (the BCS agreement) currently states, that it allows. They're saying, 'What do we have to do? On the field, we're beating people. We're playing people. We're performing at a level that's different, perhaps, than our access standards would allow.

"That's the main genesis of this. Why are we not in consideration to play in the national championship game? Why aren't we included in one of these five bowls, arguably, regularly — annually?"

The BCS has created an opening for one of the five non-automatic qualifying conferences to gain automatic status, drawing up a formula that factors in the number of top 25 teams, the finish of its highest-ranked team and the average rank of all of its teams over a four-year period. But Thompson says his presidents are pushing for the same annual entree afforded the SEC, Big 12 and other marquee conferences.

ACC commissioner John Swofford, the BCS' coordinator, has pointed out that the Mountain West agreed to the current setup, which he said "incorporates the strength of a league as a whole over a series of years."

Thompson and the CEOs of three Mountain West schools — Utah President Michael Young, Wyoming President Tom Buchanan and Air Force Superintendent John Regni — met privately with Swofford on Feb. 11, and all 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick met in Naples, Fla., on Monday.

The BCS will hold its annual spring meetings in Pasadena, Calif., in late April.

How Congress involves itself in the dispute remains to be seen. Seven members from both parties have introduced legislation to force a college football playoff or have threatened to hold hearings. Utah's attorney general also is investigating whether the BCS violates antitrust laws.

Thompson traveled to Washington to meet Thursday with the staff of seven members of the House and Friday with the staff of several unidentified senators. Congress is in recess until Monday.

"I'm not certain that we're ultimately looking for government intervention. We're trying to raise public awareness," Thompson said. "We're going to try to work within the system. Our proposal's going to go to the BCS commissioners."