Aggrieved teams. Questioned motives. College football’s Bowl Championship Series has found more than its share of controversy in 14 years of operation but nothing, most assuredly, like the storm that will kick up if the next five months of study and debate over its future format yield mere tweaks.
The prospect of a college football playoff took another step forward when NCAA president Mark Emmert put his support behind a specific version of one.
Emmert told reporters he would get behind a four-team playoff, but not one involving more teams, after giving his state of the association speech in Indianapolis.
“I see a lot of ways that a Final Four model could be successful,” Emmert said, according to The Indianapolis Star.
NEW ORLEANS — As the confetti fell, the silver-haired man stood quietly near the foot of the platform, just as he has for so many years, watching the celebration swirl. “It does not get old,” said SEC commissioner Mike Slive as another of his teams passed around the crystal football.
As always, Slive was speaking for a very large, very passionate regional audience. For almost everyone else, the SEC’s continuing dominance certainly does get old — and that’s not the only thing.
Alabama’s 21-0 win over LSU on Monday night was the league’s sixth straight BCS championship. It also might have represented the conclusion of the evolution and reordering of the sport’s hierarchy. We knew the score going in, but the all-SEC matchup marked the pinnacle, the complete concentration of power. And perhaps, it was a catalyst for significant change to college football’s postseason structure.
NEW ORLEANS — Bowl Championship Series officials will meet Tuesday to exchange ideas about possible changes to the format of major college football’s postseason system.
“Everything you can imagine will be discussed,” BCS executive director Bill Hancock said. “Everything from format, who plays who, to where they play, to the business aspect of it … it’s all going to be on the table.”
The meeting will bring together the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director to exchange ideas. The entire system is open for debate, from eliminating automatic bids to top-tier bowl games to creating a four-team playoff — an idea that’s known as the plus-one model.
But a full-scale playoff that would require numerous teams to play additional games is not a likely option.
The Bowl Championship Series has delivered again.
OK, Oklahoma State and its fans are complaining because Alabama (with one loss) will be playing LSU for college football’s national championship Monday night while the Cowboys (with one loss) were relegated to the Fiesta Bowl. But if there isn’t a subsection of some article in the BCS agreement that eliminates any team that loses to Iowa State, there ought to be.
The debate, however, goes on. Indianapolis Star reporters Kyle Neddenriep and Mark Ambrogi take another (mostly) pro-vs.-con look at the current system and a potential playoff system:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20120108/SPORTS/201080363/Point-counterpoint-BCS-vs-playoff-system
NEW ORLEANS — If it were up to the players from the nation’s top four ranked teams, college football’s national championship would be determined by a playoff, according to a survey conducted by CBSSports.com.*
Of the 126 starters and top reserves interviewed from No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Alabama, No. 3 Oklahoma State and No. 4 Stanford, 43 percent prefer a college football playoff, while 19 percent were against it and 38 percent were undecided.
“Everybody who feels like they deserve a shot would have a shot with a playoff,” Stanford senior free safety Michael Thomas said. “It definitely feels like there should be a system where there’s a clear-cut champion. There are pluses and minuses to bowls and the BCS games, but I hope in the future there is some type of solution to determine a clear-cut champion.”
If you dug deep for tickets that are priced at face value between $300 and $350 for the 2012 Allstate BCS National Championship Game, we here at The File thought you might like to see where your money has gone. The Sugar Bowl, after all, is a registered 501(c)(3) charity that doesn’t pay taxes on the cash you give it. With net assets in the neighborhood of $34 million, it has a lot of money to spread around.
http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/blog/_/name/assael_shaun/id/7420694/examining-where-bowl-money-goes-file
The N.C.A.A operates every postseason championship except the lucrative bowl system. For nearly 100 years, the bowls have been a network of privately run fiefs working with conferences, universities, corporations and individuals to create appealing but often irrelevant matchups.
The bowls should be put under the N.C.A.A.’s control by adopting a playoff system and making it an N.C.A.A. championship. This would sap the power of the Bowl Championship Series, which runs the top games now.
Some college football fans think the whole BCS system — which culminates Jan. 9 when No. 1 LSU takes on No. 2 Alabama — is unfair and unworkable. A Texas congressman wants to make it unlawful.
Well, technically, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) wants a playoff system for determining a national football champion. He has once again introduced legislation to compel college football to do so.
His “College Football Playoff Act” would “prohibit, as an unfair and deceptive act or practice, the promotion, marketing, and advertising of any post-season NCAA Division I football game as a national championship game unless such game is the culmination of a fair and equitable playoff system.”
While many would love to see a nonpartisan selection committee create the best bowl pairings, it’s a fantasy at this point. The more realistic aim is to go the other direction: Remove the restrictions and torpedo the AQ status. If it results in a plus-one or some type of playoff, all the better.
The Sugar Bowl has had an SEC team in its game for each of the past 11 years. But after LSU and Alabama qualified for the national championship game and closed the window on the SEC’s BCS selections, the game had to look elsewhere.
Would there be the same outcry if the Sugar Bowl had selected No. 6 Arkansas, which has only lost to LSU and Alabama, or even No. 9 South Carolina?
“If the rules were different, it would have been an entirely different game,” Sugar Bowl CEO Paul Hoolahan told The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune.
