Conferences meet to shape BCS successor
College football’s title format sure to spark hot debates
College football is headed . . . where, exactly? Most signs continue to point to a four-team playoff, starting with the 2014 season and replacing the Bowl Championship Series’ single-championship-game format that has kicked up contro
versy for much of the last 14 years.
But there are differ
ences to iron out, details to fill in. The conference commissioners who oversee the BCS gather today in Chicago and roll up their sleeves. Whether they’ll emerge from the scheduled seven-hour meeting with a basic plan — particulars to come — is uncertain.
From what to do with the championship format (a four-team playoff or a plus-one?) to selection guidelines (all conference champions or simply the top four teams?) to how to divide an expected revenue windfall of as much as $400 million a year, leagues have staked out a variety of positions.
“I’m confident,” BCS executive director Bill Hancock says, “that each commissioner will say ‘This is what we want, and this is also what we can live with.’ And then we’ll identify the points of disagreement and work through those.”
The group, which also includes Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick, meets again in Chicago on June 20, and a 12-member oversight committee of university CEOs will meet June 26 in Washington, D.C. — potentially to endorse a final plan.
Options: Top four teams, period, or some conference champions.
Issues: Florida President Bernie Machen said after the Southeastern Conference’s meetings last month that the league wouldn’t compromise on giving playoff berths to the top four at the end of the regular season. The Big 12 agrees. That could accommodate two teams in a competitive league that finish high, as LSU and Alabama did in 2011.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, meanwhile, is bullish on recognizing league champions. Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, “We should have the four best teams” but added that conference titles should matter. Delany says berths could go to the three top league champions and an at-large entry.
The ratings, themselves, are at issue. Support is growing to supplant the BCS’ current mathematical rankings — a composite of human polls and computer rankings — with a selection committee. One way or the other, greater weight will be given to teams’ strength of schedule.
Quoting: “Our ability to wind up with a solution that can be simply and easily explained to the American public is critical . . . given the current perceptions of the BCS,” Notre Dame’s athletics director Jack Swarbrick says. “The simpler the better.”