B.C.S. Update

[50's PONY]

BCS should allow underdog conferences their day in sun
No reformer worth his or her pulpit can make a college football tournament part of the vision. One cannot rage against a sports machine plowing across American education and then propose a post-bowl Final Four that would give every cheating heart another eight-figure reason to toss that mission statement in the trash.
College football is better off with multiple claims to its throne, with fans debating a case that can't be resolved, and with the game holding fast to Sonny Werblin's just-spell-my-name-right dogma. The Bowl Championship Series gives everyone a cause. Now it only needs to give everyone a chance.

Quick, take a survey of the major bowls before you. Southern California and Michigan in the Rose. Oklahoma and LSU in the Sugar. Florida State and Miami in the Orange. Ohio State and Kansas State in the Fiesta. The new year embraces an old custom: a full slate of heavyweight teams from heavyweight conferences enjoying their heavyweight spoils.

The problem?

"People love an underdog," Tulane President Scott Cowen said by phone. "They love a darling that comes from nowhere and sprouts its wings and has a chance to win the national title. Miami of Ohio was 13-1 and had one of the most exciting quarterbacks in the country in Ben Roethlisberger. Wouldn't it be great to see a team like that play a traditional powerhouse in one of the big bowls?"

You know, like Gonzaga playing Arizona to two overtimes in the NCAA tournament. College football needs a Gonzaga, and it doesn't need that Gonzaga sentenced to a life of thankless labor in its version of the NIT.

It's high time to break up the cartel. The BCS should throw open its doors to players who don't suit up for the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big East and NBC's very own varsity, Notre Dame, which apparently gets one year added to its network contract for every failed fourth-and-1. If Tulane goes 11-0, like it did in 1998, it shouldn't be exiled to the GMAC Bowl or some other remote corner of Poulan Weedeater Bowl-dom. Why can't the BCS allow for the once-in-a-generation possibility of a Lake Placid in pads?

"At face value," said Cowen, leader of a coalition of mid-major presidents howling at the BCS gates, "they've told us, 'We're the ones with brand equity. We're the ones who've made football what it is today. Why should we give that up to anybody else?' "

Of course, it's all about gold, lots of gold. The 63 BCS schools take in $90 million a year, leaving a lousy $5 million for the 54 non-BCS beggars. The game's power brokers see no need to move closer to the NFL's revenue-sharing model, no matter how much Cowen's coalition argues that what's good for all 117 members will ultimately be good for the ruling lords.

So the requirements to stay in the I-A game will only get tougher, and Cowen wants to slow down this train. He wants the furor over Southern Cal's exclusion from the Sugar Bowl title game to inspire a BCS overhaul complete enough to allow the likes of Conference USA to dream the impossible dream.

"We want reasonable access," Cowen said, "and we want to eliminate the branding issues. There's a negative impact on the recruiting of student-athletes, the retention of coaches and the perception of the entire athletic department when you're branded a non-BCS school."

Ever since the inception of the BCS in 1998, Tulane's would-be season in the sun, not a single non-BCS school has secured one of the two at-large berths for the four major bowls. In fact, since Army won it all in 1945, the 1984 Brigham Young team represents the only champion from a school that doesn't now belong to the BCS; BYU had to slum it in the Holiday Bowl.

Even if the BCS embraced the less prominent Division I-A conferences, the big boys would continue to dominate. Football isn't basketball. You can't just steal two or three recruits from the Coach Ks of the world and ride them to an unimagined place.

But an all-inclusive BCS would offer an occasional brush with magic. Just once, wouldn't football want to replicate the indelible first-round memory of Princeton beating UCLA, the defending national champ, in 1996? So a Northern Illinois, a Tulane, or a Miami of Ohio should be given a shot to go undefeated and play under the brightest football lights. "If the BCS were in existence many years ago," Cowen said, "Florida State and Miami would've never gotten to this stage. They were independents back then. There would've been no opportunity for those schools to be as good as they wanted to be."

No, college football doesn't need a postseason tournament for heavyweights. It needs a Gonzaga and a system selling a glimmer of one-punch hope.

***

Ian O'Connor also writes for The (Westchester, N.Y.) County Journal News

[Sam I Am]

It will be the USC Rose Bowl victory that undermines the BCS, not the complaints of the have nots in the non-BCS.

[EastStang]

Well, USC won handily and now you hear the squealing. This is two recent years in which the PAC-10 champion was hosed by the BCS. I would not be surprised to see the PAC-10 and possibly the Big X not renew with the BCS. The Rose Bowl is happy with those two conferences attending. TV networks would come running to them with money to cover their games. I think the crack in the armor has occurred. It might be good to sit back and let the rats chew each other up for awhile. Hopefully 2004-2005 will also be a bad year for Mike Tranghese (head of the BCS).

[NavyCrimson]

well - the rats have definitely started chewing for sure...lol lol lol!