BCS process under review
By MIKE KNOBLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/08/05
GRAPEVINE, Texas —
If college football coaches' poll ballots remain secret, the ESPN/USA Today rankings might be dropped from the Bowl Championship Series selection process.
That's how important the conference commissioners consider the issue, the Big 12's Kevin Weiberg said Friday.
And even if the coaches vote next week at their convention to make their ballots public, there's no guarantee they'll continue to be part of the BCS process.
That's how little has been decided about one of college football's biggest issues.
There won't be a playoff. There will be a BCS, at least through 2009. But how the BCS teams will be determined remains up in the air following Friday's five-hour meeting of the 11 Division I-A conference commissioners.
They said there are three possible selection processes:
• Continue with some variant of the numerical formulas the BCS has used since its 1998 inception. This would involve finding another poll to replace the Associated Press poll of sports writers and broadcasters.
The AP informed the BCS last month that the BCS could no longer use its poll.
• Form a selection committee to choose the teams.
• Use a formula and a selection committee in a hybrid process.
Which is most likely?
"I think it would be premature to go there," ACC commissioner John Swofford said.
"I'm probably more open to thinking about some sort of [selection committee]," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said. "Since we need to replace the AP poll, we may have to think about a group of people."
The committee system under consideration wouldn't be like the 10-man committee that chooses teams for the NCAA men's basketball tournament, Weiberg said. It probably would be more like another poll.
"It would be a broader number of people serving, with a much more public component to how people vote, and perhaps even votes that would occur on more than one basis through the course of a season," said Weiberg, coordinator of the BCS.
The secrecy of the coaches' poll became an issue last month when questions arose about conflicts of interest. Some coaches reportedly voted California lower than teams with more than one loss and voted Texas in the top three, ahead of one of three then-unbeaten teams from BCS conferences — Auburn, Southern California and Oklahoma. Texas passed California in the final BCS standings to earn a Rose Bowl berth.
"Transparency," a fancy word for making votes public, became a buzzword. Auburn supporters argued that their team would have gotten a fairer shake had the polls started at midseason, thus minimizing the effect of preseason expectations.
"When a poll is first issued, how transparent the votes are within the poll are going to be very important issues as we go forward," Weiberg said. "I'm not prepared to sit here today and say we would have to have every one of those aspects covered before we would move forward with another standings formula, but I think those are going to be important considerations. The transparency issue is one of our most important ones."
Another issue discussed Friday but not decided: Which conferences keep automatic berths in the BCS games beyond the 2007 season. That's big for the Big East, which risks losing its automatic berth now that it has been weakened by the loss of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College.
Notre Dame AD Kevin White was unable to attend Friday's meeting because of a big football recruiting weekend, Weiberg said.
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