It’s conference championship game week in college football, when the 12-team super conferences hold their one game playoffs to determine their champions and Bowl Championship Series representatives. The Atlantic Coast Conference joins the fray this season, become the third of the six power conferences (along with the Southeastern Conference and Big 12) to do so.

The creation of these conferences and their title games, both ideas hatched by former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer, was supposed to transform the sport, but it’s probably safe to assume that ACC commissioner John Swofford expected something more compelling than Saturday’s matchup of 10-1 Virginia Tech, a worthy enough participant, to be sure, and 7-4 Florida State, which will limp into Jacksonville’s Alltel Stadium on a three game losing streak.

The Big 12 can’t be overly thrilled, either, as it sends 11-0 and second ranked Texas against a 7-4 Colorado team that lost its last two games and only backed into a berth in the title game when Iowa State fell to a mediocre Kansas squad in overtime Saturday.

In the ACC, Swofford and the ABC executives who agreed to televise the game, had a right to expect something more. The league was Florida State’s personal playground throughout the 1990s.The Seminoles were so dominant that the regular season was rendered largely meaningless.

Surely the addition of Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech over the course of 2004-05 – along with the development of better programs at Maryland and North Carolina State – would produce a better regular season followed by a highly talked-about pairing of teams featuring gaudy regular season records.

That was the theory, anyway. But conference championship games, born in 1992 when Kramer exploited an NCAA loophole to create one for the newly expanded SEC, have been a mixed bag when stirred together with Kramer’s other gift to the college football landscape: the BCS.

During the seven-year BCS era, there have been complaints that the league championship game has hurt the chances of the of the SEC and Big 12 champions to win national titles because they are forced to win an extra game. But the evidence doesn’t really support the argument. Three previous BCS champions – Tennessee in 1998, Oklahoma in 2000, and LSU in 2003 – won conference championship games on their way to national championships. Oklahoma in 2004 is the only team to win a conference championship game before losing in the BCS championship game.

The Big 12 has also disproved the “extra win” requirement, as Oklahoma played in the BCS championship in 2003 despite being upset in the Big 12 championship. In 2001, Nebraska qualified for the BCS championship despite failing to reach its own league title game.

While it’s true that a few national championship contenders have been derailed in their league title games – Kansas State in 1998 and Tennessee in 2001 come to mind – more often the problem has been that the divisional play leading to the championship game ends up denying a more worthy team a chance to play for a BCS berth.

The BCS allows for two at-large berths to one of the four BCS bowls (the Orange, Rose, Fiesta, and Sugar.) In the seven years of the BCS’s existence, only one of the 14 at-large spots has gone to the loser of a conference title game: Oklahoma in 2003, when the Sooners were the only unbeaten team in the country before being upset by Kansas State, allowing Oklahoma to remain in the top two positions of the BCS standings.

That trend will continue this year unless Colorado pulls off a monumental upset in the Big 12 championship, perhaps allowing Texas to still sneak in as an at-large team.

Furthermore, the league games haven’t been that compelling. The average margin of victory in 13 SEC title games is more than 15 points, with only two games decided by fewer than seven. In nine years, the average margin of victory in the Big 12 title game is 18 points, with only three games decided by seven or fewer.

Knowing all this, why would the ACC follow Kramer’s lead to expansion and a championship game? The simple answer is: “because it can.” Like nearly every decision in big-time college athletics, this one is driven by the pursuit of revenue and exposure. ABC and CBS have been ready and willing to pay big money to televise the championship games, which have also attracted corporate sponsors like Dr Pepper. The SEC title game has been played at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome since 1994 and usually sells out months in advance. While the Big 12 game hasn’t been quite as successful as a gate attraction, it still adds plenty of dollars to conference coffers.

The ACC was heretofore known for its basketball prowess, but Swofford’s move to add Boston College, Miami, and Virginia Tech made an unspoken statement that the league would cast its lot and future earning potential with football. A big part of that was the ability to play a lucrative championship game.

So, even if the inaugural match up is unappealing, and the ACC’s new two division format prevents 9-2 Miami from any realistic shot at an at-large BCS berth, Swofford can still say the decision has raised his league’s profile by stretching its footprint beyond the Southeast and adding a major media market in Boston.

Not every conference has taken the same approach. When Penn State joined the Big Ten in 1993, creating an 11-team league, most figured it was just a matter of time until the league added a 12th team, split into divisions, and played a championship games. But 13 years and one failed overture to Notre Dame later, the Big Ten remains a gang of 11. Perhaps the Big Ten, with a presence in larger media markets than the SEC, Big 12, or ACC, hasn’t felt the same push to inflate its profile. Then again, the league has garnered four at-large BCS berths since 1998, more than any other conference, meaning added bowl revenue has helped to offset the lost revenue from not having a title game.

It’s ironic that on Saturday, while the ACC, Big 12, and SEC are staging their ho-hum championship games, most fans will train their eyes on Los Angeles and the Pac-10, where 11-0 USC faces 9-1 UCLA in the day’s best game.

The Pac-10, with just two at-large BCS berths since 1998 (the Big 12 and SEC have three each; the ACC and Big East none) has made no visible effort toward expansion, and has remained content to allow its champion to be determined over the course of the entire regular season rather than in a single, made-for-TV event. If Florida State or Colorado pull off upsets later in the day, ACC and Big 12 officials might wish they had done the same.

Mr. Levine is a writer for Football-Outsiders.com.