Expect BCS venues to stay the same

[HB Pony Dad]

As expected...

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/s ... id=3901748

That resolute manner is evident in the selection of the three bowls that will join the Rose Bowl (which, in a separate deal from the others, already is signed with the BCS through 2013). Every backslapper wearing a bowl blazer yearns for a BCS slot. You might think that the commissioners would conduct a bidding war, even in this economy.

For instance, there's Jerry World. The Dallas Cowboys Stadium that opens this year will seat at least 80,000. It will have a TV screen that stretches from Fort Worth to Dallas. It already has won the 2010 NBA All-Star Game, Super Bowl XLV (2011) and the 2014 Final Four. All that leaves out among America's great sporting events is the BCS National Championship Game and the U.S. Open.

Give Jerry Jones some time, and he'll figure out how to get Tiger Woods in the door. In the meantime, more pertinent to this discussion, Cowboys Stadium is the new home of the Cotton Bowl.

You remember the Cotton Bowl. It used to be one of the big four bowl games. But the Cotton Bowl couldn't withstand the demise of the Southwest Conference and the crapshoot that is the weather in Dallas on New Year's Day.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is now home to the Big 12 Conference. Cowboys Stadium will have a retractable roof. Those are two problems solved. Oklahoma and Texas A&M have both scheduled nonconference games there. Notre Dame and Arizona State will play there in 2013.

But the Cotton Bowl has not had the first discussion with the BCS.

"Our philosophy is, we're ready when they're ready," Cotton Bowl president Rick Baker said. "We'll be there willing to do whatever we need to do to compete at the highest level of college football. … Arguably this is going to be the finest football facility in the world. It's out of our control. We're really just on hold."

The commissioners have handled this decision the same way they have handled every major decision: There's nothing wrong with what we're doing. So we'll keep doing it.

[Stallion]

its a monopoly-of course, they don't have open bidding. The BCS Bowls are part of the contract, combination or conspiracy. The Rose Bowl and the other bowls are all part of the group setting the terms of the conspiracy-not the NCAA. The Rose Bowl demands a Big 10/PAC 10 game if it isn't the Championship Game. Other BCS Bowls demand a particular anchor conference. The BCS Bowls demand that they have access to Notre Dame based on terms less onerous than other BCS conferences.

[abezontar]

Just a random thought: what is to stop an NCAA sanctioned bowl such as the Cotton Bowl, from giving bowl invites to whomever they want (obviously barring any prior agreements the bowl may have with a conference)? Is that governed by the NCAA?

[Stallion]

Interesting angle. The NCAA sanctions bowl game. But the BCS has acontract with all Division 1A conferences and schools for several more years. Again, even the non-BCS schools have "joined the conspiracy" which causes great problems in monopoly theory-in essence its a legal impossibility to conspire with yourself.