Okay, here's my take on the omnipresent "East vs. West" debate.

Conclusion: Based on the historical record (at least as far as champions are concerned) there is little statistical basis to conclude that the East is significantly better than the West in the FCS (/I-AA).

Reasoning: There have been 31 champions crowned through the NCAA I-AA/FCS championship game since the inception of I-AA in 1978. For purposes of this analysis, I used the traditional dividing line between "East" and "West" in this country. Counting all schools east of the Mississippi as "Eastern" and all those west of the great river as "Western", there are now 29 of 126 FCS teams that are "Western".

The ratio of "Western to Total Teams" is 29/126, or 23%. Although the ratio has changed through the history of the division, there have been both additions and subtractions on both sides of the river, and I'm not about to do a year-by-year analysis, so I'm using the current ratio. I'm also including all those teams that either do not participate in the playoffs or have never participated (non-scholarship, mostly). It's not the fault of either side of the country if the other has a bunch of teams that either don't have the talent, stones, or wherewithal to compete; they're all teams in our division, and playoff-participating teams in their areas do pad their schedules from time to time with them.

I'm also putting teams in the I-AA conference in which they played if they've since moved "up" (e.g., Boise State, Louisiana Tech, Marshall), or if they were independent at the time, I've put them in the conference to which they now belong (e.g., Georgia Southern, Youngstown State).

Since the beginning of I-AA, here's the breakdown of championship game participation and success:

Code:
Conference     Champ Games    Championships
Southern            21             12
Big Sky             11              5
Missouri Valley      9              6
CAA                  8              4
Ohio Valley          4              2
Southland            6              1
MEAC                 1              1
Patriot              2              0
All conferences that have a decent number of participations have approximately a 50% rate of success in the championship game, with the Southland being the only exception. The Southern is slightly higher, the Big Sky slightly lower, but neither difference is statistically significant.

The "West" has won 5 championships (all by the Big Sky) and has 16 title game appearances (some teams in the Southland are east of the river, and Northern Iowa is west). This gives the West a winning percentage of 16.1%, and a championship game participation percentage of 25.8%, which matches favorably with the West's total membership percentage of 23.0%.

All you can say derogatorily about the West is that they haven't quite gotten it done as often as they should have in the chipper (and Montana can take the blame for part of that, at 2-4 in the championship game, but the Southland is what has hurt the West the most in this percentage).

The mighty CAA has both less championship game appearances and championships than the Big Sky, despite having more members for the entire life of I-AA/FCS.

It's the Southern Conference that has kept the East slightly better historically than the West, with the bulk of championship game appearances and championships. The Missouri Valley is helping more than the CAA, at 9 and 6, respectively, as compared to the CAA, at 8 and 4.

The CAA might be ascendant at the moment, but you don't have to go back very far to find a period where they were non-existent at the top of the division (in the 15 years from 1983-1997 the CAA and its predecessor had zero championship game appearances).

Pendula turn, dontcha know? You're slightly on top now...it hardly means that it's going to last forever (and I could just as easily say the same thing about my beloved Griz).