Proposal for playoff stonewalled by NCAA committee
Updated 15h 45m ago
By Kelly Whiteside, USA TODAY

A proposal for an eight-team college football playoff spearheaded by Georgia President Michael Adams met another roadblock when an NCAA task force decided not to discuss the issue in its first meeting Saturday.

"There was no sentiment within the group for focusing on postseason football issues, and thus I do not expect that subject to come up again in any significant way," Penn State President Graham Spanier, chair of the Task Force on Commercial Activities in Intercollegiate Athletics, wrote in an e-mail. "This was never intended to be a major focus of the committee, and the committee members feel that we have more fundamental issues to consider that relate to amateurism, the welfare of student-athletes and the use of athletes' likenesses."

In January, the NCAA's Division I Board of Directors, on which Adams sits, chose not to move on Adams' request for an exploratory committee on his playoff proposal. But the presidential task force, created to study issues involving commercialism in college sports, was expected to include postseason football in its discussions. Adams was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

The Bowl Championship Series will have its annual meetings beginning April 28 in Hollywood, Fla. There are expected to be discussions of the plus-one model, which would set the national championship matchup after the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta bowls have been played. One plus-one format would involve seeding the top four teams in the final BCS standings. The winners of semifinal bowl matchups would advance to a new title game.

However, Spanier doesn't think there will be change to the BCS format anytime soon. "I think it highly unlikely that the 'plus one' concept will be explored by the BCS at this time, since the conferences and (their) member universities are committed to our current television contracts, which run for a few more years," Spanier wrote.

The BCS will be entering its third year of a four-year agreement with Fox. ABC has a separate contract with the Rose Bowl through the 2014 game. The biggest plus-one opponents remain the Pacific-10 and the Big Ten, because of their relationship with the Rose Bowl.

Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford, the BCS coordinator, has said the BCS must decide this year on whether changes will be made to its format because of upcoming television negotiations regarding post-2010 bowl games.

This article appeared in USA TODAY on Wednesday, March 16, 2008.

It will happen. You just wait. The people in charge of making the decision are afraid of losing their grasp on the graft. But there is too much money involved in a playoff to deny it forever.

will the 'newly created game' replace the double hoster or be a new bowl ? ie. will 10 teams still make bcs games to start?

It sounds like the BCS would be cut back to eight teams again and the BCS Title Game would still be double hosted. The bowls could select whichever teams they want, as they do today, and then two winners would play for the BCS National Title a week after those.

Using such a format, the past season could have looked something like this:

SUGAR: LSU vs. Kansas
ROSE: Ohio State vs. USC
ORANGE: Virginia Tech vs. Georgia
FIESTA: Oklahoma vs. West Virginia

Two winners would then play in the BCS TITLE GAME roughly a week later.

While fans and the media may want the playoff envisioned by a graphic in the New York Post, they will not get it, ending up instead with what I just listed. That is no better than the current system and takes a shot at a BCS bowl away from the non-autobid leagues.

I tought BCS went to 10, to allow better acsess for the non-BCS conf & shut down talk about anti-trust. Doesn't going back to 8 open another can of worms. They seemed to work themselves into a corner.
You can not seed teams if Pac-10 & B-10 don't go along

templefootballfan Wrote:I tought BCS went to 10, to allow better acsess for the non-BCS conf & shut down talk about anti-trust. Doesn't going back to 8 open another can of worms. They seemed to work themselves into a corner.
You can not seed teams if Pac-10 & B-10 don't go along

you are correct

They wouldn't go back to 8 bids...they'd add another bowl, probably the Cotton in as a 5th bowl

They wont go back to 8. Because with 10 teams they can point to Boise and Hawaii as giving the nonBCS conferences an entry into BCS bowls. It is their ace in the hole vs any attack that BCS keeps others outside from those big bowl opportunities

Those complications you all mention are a big part of why I think the Plus One will not be approved in the first place. I suppose they could add the Cotton Bowl to the BCS rotation and continue to double host the title game with each venue getting a turn once every five years, instead of once every four years as it is now, but the question is if they are willing to give up that much money.

Using such a format, the past season could have looked something like this:

SUGAR: LSU vs. Hawaii
ROSE: Ohio State vs. USC
ORANGE: Virginia Tech vs. Kansas
FIESTA: Oklahoma vs. West Virginia
COTTON: Georgia vs. Illinois

Two winners would then play in the BCS TITLE GAME roughly a week later.

Going back to only eight teams making the BCS, as I posted for example above, would definitely be a big political problem. I read another article which I will track down later, however, where the President of Penn State, I believe, said he does not think they will add another bowl to the BCS. They will have no choice, though, if they want to do a Plus One concept. Money is complicating it.

Screw the playoff system. Put all the major bowls back on New Years Day like they use to be and end the football season with the Orange Bowl on New Years Day Eve. I would even settle for the Sugar Bowl on New Years Eve again to accommadate the rest of the major bowls on New Years Day again. It is just not the same party day it use to be with the day starting off with the Cotton Bowl at 11:00 Am and the day ending around midnight with the Orange and all their half time pagentry. The house full of family and friends, with a major party going on, with 5 or 6 TVS with games going on, is priceless. I could care less about the major bowls spread out now for a week or two after NewYears Day and I don't stay up to watch them either with work the next day.

There will be no playoff any time soon.. If they did one only 2 thing make real sense.. a 4 team adding one bowl to bcs system..1vs4 n 2 vs 3 and champ game 1 week later. no its not perfect but it is better.. or jump all the way to 16. The 11 conf champs get in and 5 at large. thus the big 6 conf will still get taken care of as they will almost always fill the 5 extras. go back to 11 games to take some of the burden off. You can either put them all in one bracket.. 1 vs 16 ect or you can break em east n west where 1 vs 8, 2vs 7 ect and the bracket winners play for the title. you either could use lower bowls for early games or let higher seed host. and keep 10 to 15 bowls for those not in the playoffs.

EvilVodka1 Wrote:

templefootballfan Wrote:I tought BCS went to 10, to allow better acsess for the non-BCS conf & shut down talk about anti-trust. Doesn't going back to 8 open another can of worms. They seemed to work themselves into a corner.
You can not seed teams if Pac-10 & B-10 don't go along

you are correct

They wouldn't go back to 8 bids...they'd add another bowl, probably the Cotton in as a 5th bowl

I know the Cotton Bowl wants to become a BCS bowl. But I don't necessarily think it's the best bowl to promote. There are other candidates, and each has something to promote.

Of course, I'm biased against going to Texas. Maybe it's because of the 2 years I spent in DFW.

The only thing wrong with Texas is all the Texans in it.

If there is a more than 2 team playoff (and I really don't think there will be anytime soon), it will definitely be 4 teams imo. The presidents actually seem quite happy with the current system. Most fans want a playoff, but remember how far college football has risen over the past couple of years. Since 1 loss is so often the difference between going to the championship or not, fans from all schools are following the regular season of a lot of teams they wouldn't otherwise have cared too much about (i.e. think about how big the Missouri/Oklahoma and WV/Pitt games were last year). It's almost the reverse of college basketball where a fantastic post-season has seemed to drain away interest in the regular season (at least outside your own team/conference).

Cheap shots on the BCS
By Tony Barnhart | Tuesday, April 22, 2008, 08:05 AM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Now let me see if I have this straight.

Oil is at $117 a barrel.

The housing market is in crisis.

We’re at war in Iraq.

We have over 40 million people with no health insurance.

Food prices are going through the roof.

And members of Congress apparently STILL don’t have enough to do because three of them-one of them from Georgia-are asking for an investigation into the BCS.

They are saying that the BCS may be an illegal enterprise that violates antitrust law.

Let me help the gentlemen from Georgia (Lynn Westmoreland), Idaho (Mike Simpson), and Hawaii (Neil Abercrombie).

The BCS is a lot of things. It can be aggravating, unfair, illogical and almost impossible to explain. Is there a better way to determine Division I-A’s national champion? You bet there is.

But if you (or your staff) had done a little homework, you would know that it is NOT illegal.

I’m going to walk you through this very quickly. Feel free to take notes.

In 1984 the United States Supreme Court (surely you’ve heard of them) ruled that individual schools, not the NCAA, owned the television rights to college football games. The schools delegate their rights to their respective conferences, who have the authority to negotiate TV contracts.

The BCS contract is between the six major conferences and two networks (FOX, ABC). Each of those six conference champs gets an automatic bid to a BCS bowl. Without that guarantee, there would have been no deal. There are access points to the BCS for the other five conferences that have been negotiated. Everybody involved has signed off on the agreement.

If all the parties involved agree to the system and sign the contracts without duress, by definition it can’t be illegal.

And maybe this escaped your notice. There were congressional hearings on the BCS in 2005 and absolutely nothing happened. Why? Because five minutes into the hearings it was clear that they were a colossal waste of time. It was just a bunch of politicians getting some face time on ESPN.

But this is an election year and next to beating up the IRS, there is no quicker way to score cheap political points is to bash the BCS.

Mr. Westmoreland feels his beloved Georgia Bulldogs should have been in the big game. That’s a fair argument to have. But at the end of the day LSU went to the BCS championship game because it beat Tennessee to win the SEC title. If Georgia had beaten Tennessee in Knoxville instead of getting its butt kicked, the Bulldogs would have gotten their shot. And I believe Georgia WOULD have beaten LSU in the SEC championship game.

I go back to the argument I made last December. If Georgia had won the SEC championship game and another conference team had played for the BCS title in its place, then there WOULD have been a congressional investigation. It’s okay to be a fan. Fans don’t have to be logical. That’s why we love them. But members of Congress should be held to a higher standard.

When it comes to Mr. Abercrombie, I barely know where to start. He was complaining about a system that not only gave his school the single biggest athletic event in its history, but it also cut Hawaii a check for $4.4 million after the Warriors got embarrassed by Georgia 41-10. If not for the BCS, Hawaii would have stayed at home and played in the Hawaii Bowl for almost no money and no recognition.

Was Mr. Abercrombie suggesting that Hawaii should have played in the BCS championship game because the Warriors were 12-0 against one of the weakest schedules in the history of mankind?

Ditto for Mr. Simpson. If not for the BCS, Boise State’s magical Fiesta Bowl night against Oklahoma two seasons ago would never have happened. Ian Johnson may have proposed to this girlfriend on the field, but it would have on his own blue turf in the Humanitarian Bowl with nobody watching.

If these distinguished gentlemen believe there should be a college football playoff, that’s fine. Let’s have that argument. Dial up your local college president and make the suggestion because they call the shots. If there is ever a playoff in Division I-A football, it will be because the presidents want it to happen-not Congress.

Is the BCS a flawed system? Of course it is. But it’s a lot better than what we used to have and it’s probably not as good as what we’ll have in the future. That is a debate is going on right now within the conferences that make up the BCS.

But we don’t need the cheap theatrics from Congress. Save it for the campaign trail.

This article appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, April 22, 2008.

This article, from a supporter of the BCS, is a construction of fantasy, based on a tissue of lies. He speaks of the 'Miracle of Boise,' and totally ignores those teams that have been screwed royally by the BCS.

Can you hear me, Auburn?

The BCS, and supporters of 'Tradition,' are ruining college football, and saying that the controversy is good the game. These people say that a purely subjective and arbitrary system of determining a champion is good for the game. They say undeserving teams should be in bowls because they come from the 'right school,' and that counts for more than talent and skill.

Can you hear me, Illinois and the Rose Bowl?

SCREW THE BCS!!!

Its called Anti-trust!!!! That's how Congress will force a playoff. The option will be have a playoff or lose your tax-exempt status and face anti-trust prosecution by the IRS!

Bit; the year Auburn got left out, there were 3 undeafeted teams. even with a playoff, one of them gets left out.

With a playoff, all could lose. They'd all have to play somebody. A playoff would include a minimum of 4 teams, which could very easily handle 3 undefeated teams. Think before you speak.

If that's how well Temple teaches you guys to count, it's a blessing that we booted y'all.

There is no need for personal attacks. I am sure TFF thought the Auburn comment referred to those people who thought the Tigers should have been in the BCS Title Game instead of either Oklahoma or USC rather than if there had been a four-team playoff. One other thing to consider is that, even if there had been a four-team playoff in 2004, there would have been snobbish forces trying to exclude undefeated Utah so the root problem still exists. The only fair playoff is one that includes all conferences and there will always be some type of elitists in positions of great influence who do not want such a thing to take place.

Any system in which the selection is arbitrary, and left open to controversy of any kind, is disrespecting of all college athletes who compete for the honor of their schools. Some look at this as nothing more than minor leagues for the pros, and that's not what college football is supposed to be about.

As far as a playoff including everyone... that's what I've always proposed - a playoff including ALL CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS. If you can't win your conference, you don't belong in the playoff.

By the way, it wasn't a personal attack. You'd know if it was.