USA Today: Playoffs? Doesn't Look Good, College Fans

[MrMustang1965]

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY

First things first. Major college football is no closer to a playoff than it was before this season erupted in controversy, before the Associated Press grew so uneasy with the Bowl Championship Series that the wire service vetoed use of its media poll.

For one thing, there's what Big 12 Conference Commissioner and BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg calls "a practical reality." The Bowl Championship Series just committed to a new TV contract running through the 2009 season. The Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Rose Bowl are wed to ABC through 2013. (Related item: BCS title-game reviews)

Even if presidents and other pertinent administrators were to warm somehow to the idea of a playoff, their hands are all but tied for the next decade. You might not learn to love the BCS. But till then - at least - deal with it.

And its limitations.

An evolving system in its first seven years, the four-bowl, multi-league arrangement faces fundamental, if still unspecified, change the next two seasons. Its team-selection process is being rethought after the Associated Press' pullout last week, with Weiberg and other major-conference commissioners weighing the formation of an NCAA (news - web sites) basketball tournament-type committee.

Beyond that is an expansion to five bowls when the new TV contract kicks in with the 2006 season. Preliminary plans are to make the extra game a landing spot for two additional teams, increasing access to midlevel conferences that were long shut out of the arrangement's big-time payouts and exposure.

Final decisions will be hammered out in the next four months. The commissioners will huddle during the NCAA convention in early January, and the BCS conducts its annual meeting in April.

Oregon's David Frohnmayer, who heads the BCS' presidential oversight committee, is frank. "Anyone who thinks he or she is going to win a popularity contest or a political race out of this is crazy," he says. "At some point, people have to get real and realize there is always going to be an argument, if not about No. 1 and No. 2, then (about) how you get 4 and 5 and how you get 6 and 7."

Those are issues bubbling right now. While Nos. 1 and 2 Southern California and Oklahoma prepare to play for the national title in the FedEx Orange Bowl (news - web sites), undefeated Auburn is relegated to a consolation berth in the Nokia (news - web sites) Sugar. Neither California nor the Rose Bowl is happy with the late-season turn of events that left Texas, not Cal, fourth in the BCS' composite rankings and bound for Pasadena on New Year's Day.

The BCS appeared poised to demand changes in the polls - that the media's and USA TODAY/ESPN coaches' rankings not start until October and that the coaches reveal their final ballots - before AP pulled its poll from the composite formula. It carried one-third weight. The coaches' poll was weighted a third, and computer ratings accounted for the final third. (The coaches have no plans to pull out of the BCS on their own and thus far have declined to reveal their votes.)

Subtracting the balance lent by the Associated Press could be critical. Confidence in the coaches' rankings has cracked after the December vote shifting that helped Texas supplant Cal in the BCS lineup. Though there was little quibbling with the way USC, Oklahoma and Auburn were sorted out - the polls and computers were unanimous in ranking them 1-2-3 - the stakes at the top are even higher.

Weiberg concedes that moving on with only the coaches' poll and computer ratings is unlikely. Replacing the AP poll with another, existing or new, is a possibility, but it will be difficult to match the credibility of rankings dating to 1936.

A selection committee is only a partial answer. Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese and other proponents see it merely as a tool for setting the No. 1-vs.-2 matchup. Next year, however, the BCS also will have to determine Nos. 3-6. BCS guidelines award automatic bowl berths to a major conference runner-up finishing No. 3 or 4 and to a champion from one of the nation's five other conferences that finishes sixth or better.

The 3-4 provision will disappear starting in 2006. But there'll still be a qualifying provision for the five midlevel conferences; one of their teams will nail down a BCS berth with a 12th-or-better ranking.

Some sort of black-and-white, number-attached standings will be needed.

At the same time, Weiberg and the other commissioners who run the BCS must settle on its second-generation format. The fifth game, beginning with the '06 season, is a given. But this season's USC-Oklahoma-Auburn logjam - three undefeated teams impossible to fit into a single title game - has revived talks of an alternate "plus-one" proposal.

Play the four current bowls as a sort of preliminary round. Re-rank the teams, or use a selection committee, to identify two national championship qualifiers. And have them square off in the fifth game for the national championship.

Of course, if that format were in effect this season and USC, Oklahoma and Auburn won their initial bowls (the Trojans and Sooners wouldn't meet in the Orange in that scenario), the BCS would be in the same pick-two-of-the-three predicament. Further limiting the prospects of this concept is the opposition of school presidents, who view it as a mini-playoff.

"The train, I think, has pretty much left the station unless somebody wants to pull the emergency cord on it," Frohnmayer says. "We've not really had a chance to canvass the landscape. ... (But) my guess is, if anything, the Pac-10 would be happier to go back to the Rose Bowl with the Big Ten than to do anything more down this line."

He's not the only one suggesting that if frustration with the BCS reached critical mass, if officials ever gave up on getting things right, the next step would be backward - to a pre-BCS, every-league-and-team-for-itself system. Not to a playoff.

"At least in the short to the midterm, if we went in another direction, it would not be in that direction," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany says. "The critics should know that."

[MrMustang1965]

A selection committee is only a partial answer. Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese and other proponents see it merely as a tool for setting the No. 1-vs.-2 matchup. Next year, however, the BCS also will have to determine Nos. 3-6. BCS guidelines award automatic bowl berths to a major conference runner-up finishing No. 3 or 4 and to a champion from one of the nation's five other conferences that finishes sixth or better.

The 3-4 provision will disappear starting in 2006. But there'll still be a qualifying provision for the five midlevel conferences; one of their teams will nail down a BCS berth with a 12th-or-better ranking.

Some sort of black-and-white, number-attached standings will be needed.

At the same time, Weiberg and the other commissioners who run the BCS must settle on its second-generation format. The fifth game, beginning with the '06 season, is a given. But this season's USC-Oklahoma-Auburn logjam - three undefeated teams impossible to fit into a single title game - has revived talks of an alternate "plus-one" proposal.

Play the four current bowls as a sort of preliminary round. Re-rank the teams, or use a selection committee, to identify two national championship qualifiers. And have them square off in the fifth game for the national championship.

Of course, if that format were in effect this season and USC, Oklahoma and Auburn won their initial bowls (the Trojans and Sooners wouldn't meet in the Orange in that scenario), the BCS would be in the same pick-two-of-the-three predicament. Further limiting the prospects of this concept is the opposition of school presidents, who view it as a mini-playoff.

"The train, I think, has pretty much left the station unless somebody wants to pull the emergency cord on it," Frohnmayer says. "We've not really had a chance to canvass the landscape. ... (But) my guess is, if anything, the Pac-10 would be happier to go back to the Rose Bowl with the Big Ten than to do anything more down this line."

He's not the only one suggesting that if frustration with the BCS reached critical mass, if officials ever gave up on getting things right, the next step would be backward - to a pre-BCS, every-league-and-team-for-itself system. Not to a playoff.

"At least in the short to the midterm, if we went in another direction, it would not be in that direction," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany says. "The critics should know that."

[NavyCrimson]

probably time to go find another hobby in the 'fall' for many of us -

its just hard to believe how the nonbcs-bs schools will sit around for another 5 yrs (2009) & get bent over & enjoy it but i guess they will?!

obviously they don't need the money $$$ that much in the first place for their athletic departments so its not worth fight for!

oh well?

[Sam I Am]

If the sports writers have a conflict of interest in having thier poll part of the BCS, then the football coaches have an even bigger conflict of interest. Their poll should be dropped by the BCS too. But it looks like we are stuck with the BCS until someone sues the NCAA. Senator Hatch needs to hold more hearings next Fall.

[RGV Pony]

Perhaps D-1 football should hire Jim Mora as its spokesperson. That's Jim Mora w/ his famous incredulous "playoffs!?" remark.