Big Ten Fights Postseason Changes
This is an article from the April 27, 2008, edition of the Chicago Tribune from a writer named Teddy Greenstein:
Jim Delany will arrive in Miami for the BCS meetings without devil horns. He also will leave the Grim Reaper costume back at Big Ten headquarters. Delany, frankly, is annoyed the pro-playoff college football crowd has labeled him and Pac-10 counterpart Tom Hansen "the axis of obstruction."
The Big Ten commissioner doesn't see it that way, and that's a point he's likely to express Monday and Tuesday when he meets with his fellow power brokers. He says he's simply trying to "protect and enhance" the sport while also protecting the interests of his beloved Big Ten. And besides, the vast majority of university presidents also oppose a playoff, by all accounts. "Our position has been crystal clear for the last 13 years," he said. "We're interested in helping the bowl system, helping our regular season and creating a 1 versus 2 game without going further. If someone has a new idea, they have to carry the burden."
The principle new idea—fairly new, anyway—is to adopt a Plus-One system. An unseeded Plus-One would create a championship game the week after the BCS bowl games are played. A seeded Plus-One would pit 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 in semifinal bowl games, followed by a winner-take-all extravaganza. Delany opposes both formats. A seeded Plus-One—a "misleading" euphemism for a four-team playoff, he said—would minimize the other three BCS bowl games and force a Big Ten team seeking a national title to win two de-facto road games played in warm-weather sites.
Delany is also certain it would lead to an eight- or 12-team playoff that would devalue the "every game counts" quality of college football's regular season. And what would it solve? Last year's final-season top four included Oklahoma and Virginia Tech—but not USC or Georgia. "I think you would double the number of unhappy teams," Delany said. An unseeded Plus-One has legitimate pluses. It could preserve the Big Ten vs. Pac-10 Rose Bowl and potentially give meaning to all five BCS bowl games, with winners getting a possible shot at the title game. But, again, fairness issues would abound. How would college football determine which of the five teams would advance? By vote? By a combination of vote and computer?
Kevin O'Malley, a sports television consultant who helped invent the current BCS formula, suggested this objective method: The highest-ranked teams that win their bowl games would advance. It might be the best idea out there. "The BCS would like to reduce controversy," O'Malley said. "Would it?"
Potentially. Plus the extra game, officials assume, would bring a richer offer from Fox, which has the rights to the non-Rose BCS bowls for two more seasons. If Fox passed, ABC/ESPN could jump in. "It would never eliminate the controversy," said Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, who has some affection for a non-seeded Plus-One. "But it would make more money and add value [to the BCS bowls]." But any change to the current system still would have to clear some serious hurdles.
Delany and Hansen appear philosophically opposed to extending the season to 14 games. And their deal with the Rose Bowl and ABC/ESPN lasts six more years, although some say it could be amended for a new format. When people heckle Delany about his refusal to give up the Rose Bowl, he has been known to reply: "OK, then how about asking the ACC to give up its conference basketball tournament?"
"It's easy enough to blame us," he said. "I could put forward a revolutionary 16-team playoff idea that they couldn't support. Eliminate conference title games and go back to an 11-game schedule.
"Have four sites in the Midwest and four in the Sun Belt, and the higher-seeded team hosts games. You could have games in Madison or Michigan. LSU would have played at Ohio State [in the BCS title game]. And eliminate the bowl system. I can create a system that would probably have support in the public and one that they would reject." They would reject it, in part, because everyone agrees college football ain't broke. Attendance and regular-season TV ratings were up last season, and the streak of wild upsets (USC-Stanford, Ohio State-Illinois, West Virginia-Pitt) created an immeasurable buzz. But the BCS bowl games mostly fizzled, and ratings were down for four of the five.
Burke Magnus, ESPN's recently promoted senior vice president of college sports programming, will attend the Miami meetings and express ABC/ESPN's desire to compete for the TV rights to the entire BCS package of bowl games once Fox's deal expires after the 2009 season. "We're interested in it as it is today," Magnus said. "We're more interested if it goes to a different model. It's just levels of interest."
Many have assumed that Fox Sports President Ed Goren, whose company will have exclusive negotiating rights beginning in September, would make an even stronger push for a playoff. Not so, he said. "The talk-radio guys and the sports fans with the around-the-horn arguments are overwhelmingly in favor of a new format," he said. "And three years ago I would have been one of those bobblehead dolls. But I've either been brainwashed, or educated, to another side to this story." Goren said the current BCS system has given college football some of its greatest regular seasons. And because only one BCS bowl game determines the national title, players actually can enjoy the total experience. "Five teams go back to campus as champions," Goren said. "If you go into a different system, you have one winner and everyone else goes home a loser."
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