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What can be done about the BCS?
By Bobby La Gesse
Date Posted: 2009-08-27
The moment he stepped into Hy-Vee, Austen Arnaud knew what was coming.
The look was everywhere. People recognized him as the Iowa State quarterback. By the time he grabbed his gallon of milk, the double takes turned into a few words, the few words turned into a conversation and the conversation turned to the BCS.
And if there is one thing Arnaud has learned about the BCS, it’s that no one agrees on it.
Some dismiss its value all together. Some want a playoff. Some love the tradition of the bowls. Some think it’s too tough for a non-automatic qualifying school to make the BCS championship.
But everyone wants to discuss it.
“It’s just a cloud hanging over college football right now,” Arnaud said. “Everyone feels different about it.”
Since each of the 11 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences recently signed a contract ensuring the survival of the BCS through the 2012 season, it is here for the immediate future.
That means the congressional hearings, complaints on financial compensation, and playoff proposals will be around as well.
So that begs a question: What is college football to do with the BCS?
“I don’t have the solution,” ISU coach Paul Rhoads said. “I don’t have a plan. No system will ever be perfect, but until someone presents something that makes so much sense, this is what we will have. We have to make it work.”
The BCS as progress
The BCS was supposed to be a step in the right direction.
The Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance, two 1990s systems designed to create a true national championship, didn’t really work. Neither could guarantee the best two teams a spot in the same bowl because the agreements didn’t include the Big Ten, Pac-10 or the Rose Bowl.
But the BCS, in theory, could.
By incorporating the trio into a pact that included Notre Dame, the Big East, Big 12, ACC, SEC and three other major bowls, a legitimate champion could be crowned.
Starting with the 1998 season, the top two teams in the BCS standings, which is based on two polls and six computer formulas, would play for the BCS championship.
“The BCS does do things that weren’t possible before,” Rhoads said.
An automatic qualifying conference gets $18 million for the first team it gets in a BCS bowl. If a conference places a second team into a BCS game, it will receive an additional $4 million.
Non-automatic qualifying universities get approximately $9 million at the beginning of the season and an additional $9 million if one of their teams plays in a BCS bowl, with the BCS participant and its conference getting the bulk of the money. The rest is split among the other non-automatic qualifying universities.
Money aside, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said the benefits a program gets from a BCS berth is the same regardless of which conference you are in. The Utes have played in two BCS bowls.
“The Fiesta Bowl certainly did a lot for our recruiting and the visibility of our program since 2005,” Whittingham said. “We’ve been able to get in a lot more doors and obviously the Sugar Bowl this past year just added to that.”
Since its inception, the formula has been tweaked, removing margin of victory and deemphasizing strength of schedule, to ensure the best teams meet for the championship. The biggest change occurred in 2005, when the Associated Press removed its poll from the standings.
After a split national championship in 2003, non-automatic qualifying conferences calling for more equality, and a Senate probe into the BCS, several changes were made.
A fifth bowl, the BCS National Championship Game, was implemented. Non-BCS conferences were given a larger percentage of BCS revenue and qualifying standards for non-automatic qualifying teams were changed to make it easier for a Utah or Hawaii to make a BCS Bowl. The BCS and the little guys
Because of the current BCS rules, TCU football coach Gary Patterson believes it’s easier for his Horned Frogs to make a BCS bowl than for 80 percent of the Big 12.
All twelve teams have to go through each other to get the conference’s automatic berth, which Patterson said usually ends up in the hands of Texas or Oklahoma, and can leave a potentially deserving team like last year’s Texas Tech squad out.
“There are only a couple of teams that have gone to BCS bowl games in the Big 12,” Patterson said. “For me, it’s a different climb up the mountain.”
Instead of winning the Mountain West Conference, TCU, like all other non-automatic qualifying schools, must finish in the top 12 of the BCS standings to receive an automatic bid, or in the top 16 if the team is ranked ahead of the champion of an automatic qualifying conference. If two teams qualify, the highest-ranked team would receive the automatic bid.
To do that, Whittingham said it will usually take a conference championship and an undefeated record. But as Patterson said, it’s not required.
“The conference champion (automatically) qualifying is the only thing that the Big 12 has against us,” Patterson said.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney thinks being a non-automatic qualifier holds more weight than it should, especially when it comes to the Rose Bowl.
The first time a Big Ten or Pac-10 champion, which are contractually bound to the bowl, qualify for the national championship game from 2010-13, and a non-automatic qualifying school makes the BCS, the Rose Bowl must take that team.
“They can play their way into the Rose Bowl, which hasn’t been true in the past,” Delany said at Big Ten media days. “That’s additional access. Standards have been, I think, lightened to access the BCS.”
The BCS and its problems
Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson wants more than that.
He wants revenue distribution changes. He wants to change the automatic qualifying status. He wants a playoff.
“The BCS system could be improved,” Thompson said in an e-mail. “That is what the MWC wants to do.”
The MWC doesn’t receive an automatic BCS bowl appearance, and one of its members, Utah, was the only undefeated team in the FBS last season. The Utes didn’t play in the title game.
Thompson believes his conference is on par with the six automatic qualifiers and cites the MWC’s .552 winning percentage since 2007 against automatic qualifying teams, the highest in the country.
The MWC proposed an eight-team playoff to the BCS this year, which wasn’t approved. Instead, every FBS conference signed a TV contract with ESPN, which kept the current system in tact.
On July 8, the MWC became the last conference to sign the deal.
“We couldn’t take our kids voluntarily out of the chance to play in the BCS bowl game,” Thompson said at the MWC media day. “As much as we want to change the system, it is the only system.”
Not if U.S. Rep. Joe Barton has his way. Barton is one of three U.S. House members who have written a bill to force a college football playoff system.
“I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit,” Barton told the Associated Press. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
This isn’t the first time Congress has gotten involved with the BCS.
Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees held hearings about the system. This year, there were two additional hearings, and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch argued for BCS reform in Sports Illustrated and on ESPN.com.
“Sadly, the exclusionary system of crowning a national champion only scratches the surface of the unfairness and questionable legality of the BCS,” Hatch wrote in his ESPN piece published July 14.
Thompson doesn’t believe it’s fair that an automatic qualifying conference gets paid one amount for placing a team in a BCS bowl and the MWC gets paid a smaller amount.
Over the last two seasons, the MWC has re-ceived more than $13.5 million in BCS revenue. The average automatic qualifying conference received an average of $41 million. The other four FBS conferences received an average of $6 million.
“Such economic disparities and anomalies cannot be justified and should not continue,” Thompson said in front of Congress in May. “Many have said the current BCS system ensures a permanent underclass. They are right.”
Thompson said the economic disparities create problems for non-automatic qualifiers in recruiting, facilities, staff salaries and scholarships. It’s something Whittingham said can be a difference on game day.
“Bigger budgets help,” Whittingham said. “It allows you to do more facility-wise and in other areas, but that certainly is something that is one of the primary reasons we feel we should be an automatic qualifying conference, to get a share of the pie.”
Under current BCS rules, any conference can gain automatic qualifying status based on its performance in a four-year cycle. An automatic qualifying conference can also lose its status based on performance in a four-year cycle.
After the most recent cycle ended in 2007, the Big East did not meet automatic qualifying status — average conference champion rank in the top 12 of the BCS standings — but did meet the threshold for receiving a waiver to compete in BCS bowl games for the next two seasons.
Thompson, and the MWC, believe the mark for an automatic qualifying conference should be a .400 winning percentage in non-conference games against other automatic qualifying schools. Using those standards, the MWC would become the only additional automatic qualifying conference.
“If you perform and you win games and you’re playing quality opponents and you’re beating the Oklahomas, the Alabamas, the UCLAs, the Michigans and all the people we’ve beaten, that should be our statement,” Thompson said.
The BCS is for the power players
Rhoads sees Thompson’s plight.
“I would be fighting if I was them without a doubt,” Rhoads said.
But that doesn’t mean he’s against the BCS. Rhoads hasn’t seen a better postseason system presented and until he does he’s willing to stick with the BCS.
“The argument is that it’s not fool proof,” Rhoads said. “That is absolutely right, but it’s awfully close. If the two best teams aren’t playing for the national championship every year, then two of the three or two of the four are.”
Even though Rhoads has coached in automatic qualifying conferences since 1995, he’s never brought up the prospect of a BCS bowl berth with his players, even in 2005, when as defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh, he coached in the Fiesta Bowl.
No, Rhoads only talked about winning a conference cham pionship. Anything else was a bonus.
“We weren’t shouting BCS at the end of every practice,” Rhoads said.
That’s a common theme for coaches. Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen, who was the Florida offensive coordinator the last four years, said at SEC media days that he never talked to the Gators about winning a national championship.
The focus was on the conference championship and the conference championship only, even if the SEC champion has played in three-straight national championship games.
Whittingham uses the same approach at Utah and not just because his Utes aren’t in an automatic qualifying conference. While the nation debated if undefeated Utah deserved to play in the title game last season, Whittingham didn’t bring up the BCS, the national championship or whether the Utes deserved a title shot to his team.
He only talked about the next opponent and the MWC title.
“We preached worry about what you can control and that some things are out of your hands,” Whittingham said. “All you can control is playing your best football every week.”
The BCS and subjective judgment
But is that enough?
ISU secondary coach Chris Ash thinks it should be. He spent the last two years in the MWC at San Diego State and thinks the MWC should get an automatic invite into the BCS.
“When you talk about Utah, TCU, BYU, one of those teams is going to be a potential top-15 team, top-10 team that would have a chance to compete in a BCS game,” Ash said.
When it comes to comparing automatic qualifiers and non-automatic qualifiers, that’s when things get dicey.
Utah has gone undefeated twice in the last four years. Ash isn’t sure if they were one of the two best teams either year. He can’t say either way. All he knows is Utah put together two great teams.
“I guarantee you half the Big 12 teams would not want to play the Mountain West,” Ash said. “So the biggest thing I learned was that it’s a good league and there are a lot of good non-BCS teams.”
Rhoads has seen three out of the four non-automatic qualifying teams win BCS bowl games, including Utah against his Pittsburgh squad in 2005. He knows they are quality programs, but for him the hardest part of evaluating a Boise State or a Utah is figuring out how well they would do in the Pac-10 or Big 12.
“I don’t know if I can take a 12-0 team or an 11-1 team and put them in a different league and say they are going to be 12-0 or 11-1 over 12 football games,” Rhoads said.
Patterson is trying to find that out.
His Horned Frogs are willing to play anyone at any time. He wants to show the country his program is on par with the big boys. So he plays, and routinely beats, teams from the elite conferences.
In the last six years TCU is 8-3 against teams from automatic qualifying leagues, with wins against Oklahoma, a national power, and Texas Tech, a perennial Top 25 program.
Patterson knows that’s all he can do. How people view those results is out of his hands.
“For me, we’ve already proven our worth,” Patterson said. “Out of half of the Division I schools, there is probably going to be one of the top 12 or 15 teams in the country, and what we have to do is do that on a year-to-year basis.”
The BCS and the future
The BCS is here to stay, at least through the latest TV contract.
Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe and SEC commissioner Mike Slive both said universities, athletic departments and conference commissioners are unlikely to support a playoff. ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford took it a step further, saying don’t expect the BCS to change.
“In terms of the next five years, I think what we’re going to see is the BCS, by and large, as it is today, and then we’ll go from there,” Swofford said at ACC media days.
For Whittingham and Patterson, that means winning more games and proving their worth.
For Thompson, that means working toward reform.
For Rhoads and Mullen, that means focusing in on conference championships.
And for Arnaud, it means still taking part in the never ending BCS argument.
“Everyone has an opinion,” Arnaud said. “That isn’t going to change.”
Bobby La Gesse can be reached at (515) 663-6929, or rlagesse@amestrib.com.
BCS revenue distributions
The BCS distributes its money based on how many teams a conference places in a BCS bowl game and if a school is in an automatic qualifying conference or not. Here is a look at how much BCS revenue each conference has received in the past two years.
Conference Amount
Big Ten $45,997,717
SEC $45,997,717
Big 12 $45,975,632
Pac-10 $36,997,717
ACC $36,965,634
Big East $36,965,634
MWC $13,512,800
WAC $12,394,000
C-USA $5,275,200
MAC $3,602,400
Sun Belt $3,591,600
Source: Mountain West Conference documents presented to Congress in May.
By Bobby La Gesse
Date Posted: 2009-08-27
The winner of the BCS championship game receives a crystal football trophy. The BCS started with the 1998 season.
AP photo
AP photo
The moment he stepped into Hy-Vee, Austen Arnaud knew what was coming.
The look was everywhere. People recognized him as the Iowa State quarterback. By the time he grabbed his gallon of milk, the double takes turned into a few words, the few words turned into a conversation and the conversation turned to the BCS.
And if there is one thing Arnaud has learned about the BCS, it’s that no one agrees on it.
Some dismiss its value all together. Some want a playoff. Some love the tradition of the bowls. Some think it’s too tough for a non-automatic qualifying school to make the BCS championship.
But everyone wants to discuss it.
“It’s just a cloud hanging over college football right now,” Arnaud said. “Everyone feels different about it.”
Since each of the 11 Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences recently signed a contract ensuring the survival of the BCS through the 2012 season, it is here for the immediate future.
That means the congressional hearings, complaints on financial compensation, and playoff proposals will be around as well.
So that begs a question: What is college football to do with the BCS?
“I don’t have the solution,” ISU coach Paul Rhoads said. “I don’t have a plan. No system will ever be perfect, but until someone presents something that makes so much sense, this is what we will have. We have to make it work.”
The BCS as progress
The BCS was supposed to be a step in the right direction.
The Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance, two 1990s systems designed to create a true national championship, didn’t really work. Neither could guarantee the best two teams a spot in the same bowl because the agreements didn’t include the Big Ten, Pac-10 or the Rose Bowl.
But the BCS, in theory, could.
By incorporating the trio into a pact that included Notre Dame, the Big East, Big 12, ACC, SEC and three other major bowls, a legitimate champion could be crowned.
Starting with the 1998 season, the top two teams in the BCS standings, which is based on two polls and six computer formulas, would play for the BCS championship.
“The BCS does do things that weren’t possible before,” Rhoads said.
An automatic qualifying conference gets $18 million for the first team it gets in a BCS bowl. If a conference places a second team into a BCS game, it will receive an additional $4 million.
Non-automatic qualifying universities get approximately $9 million at the beginning of the season and an additional $9 million if one of their teams plays in a BCS bowl, with the BCS participant and its conference getting the bulk of the money. The rest is split among the other non-automatic qualifying universities.
Money aside, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said the benefits a program gets from a BCS berth is the same regardless of which conference you are in. The Utes have played in two BCS bowls.
“The Fiesta Bowl certainly did a lot for our recruiting and the visibility of our program since 2005,” Whittingham said. “We’ve been able to get in a lot more doors and obviously the Sugar Bowl this past year just added to that.”
Since its inception, the formula has been tweaked, removing margin of victory and deemphasizing strength of schedule, to ensure the best teams meet for the championship. The biggest change occurred in 2005, when the Associated Press removed its poll from the standings.
After a split national championship in 2003, non-automatic qualifying conferences calling for more equality, and a Senate probe into the BCS, several changes were made.
A fifth bowl, the BCS National Championship Game, was implemented. Non-BCS conferences were given a larger percentage of BCS revenue and qualifying standards for non-automatic qualifying teams were changed to make it easier for a Utah or Hawaii to make a BCS Bowl. The BCS and the little guys
Because of the current BCS rules, TCU football coach Gary Patterson believes it’s easier for his Horned Frogs to make a BCS bowl than for 80 percent of the Big 12.
All twelve teams have to go through each other to get the conference’s automatic berth, which Patterson said usually ends up in the hands of Texas or Oklahoma, and can leave a potentially deserving team like last year’s Texas Tech squad out.
“There are only a couple of teams that have gone to BCS bowl games in the Big 12,” Patterson said. “For me, it’s a different climb up the mountain.”
Instead of winning the Mountain West Conference, TCU, like all other non-automatic qualifying schools, must finish in the top 12 of the BCS standings to receive an automatic bid, or in the top 16 if the team is ranked ahead of the champion of an automatic qualifying conference. If two teams qualify, the highest-ranked team would receive the automatic bid.
To do that, Whittingham said it will usually take a conference championship and an undefeated record. But as Patterson said, it’s not required.
“The conference champion (automatically) qualifying is the only thing that the Big 12 has against us,” Patterson said.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney thinks being a non-automatic qualifier holds more weight than it should, especially when it comes to the Rose Bowl.
The first time a Big Ten or Pac-10 champion, which are contractually bound to the bowl, qualify for the national championship game from 2010-13, and a non-automatic qualifying school makes the BCS, the Rose Bowl must take that team.
“They can play their way into the Rose Bowl, which hasn’t been true in the past,” Delany said at Big Ten media days. “That’s additional access. Standards have been, I think, lightened to access the BCS.”
The BCS and its problems
Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson wants more than that.
He wants revenue distribution changes. He wants to change the automatic qualifying status. He wants a playoff.
“The BCS system could be improved,” Thompson said in an e-mail. “That is what the MWC wants to do.”
The MWC doesn’t receive an automatic BCS bowl appearance, and one of its members, Utah, was the only undefeated team in the FBS last season. The Utes didn’t play in the title game.
Thompson believes his conference is on par with the six automatic qualifiers and cites the MWC’s .552 winning percentage since 2007 against automatic qualifying teams, the highest in the country.
The MWC proposed an eight-team playoff to the BCS this year, which wasn’t approved. Instead, every FBS conference signed a TV contract with ESPN, which kept the current system in tact.
On July 8, the MWC became the last conference to sign the deal.
“We couldn’t take our kids voluntarily out of the chance to play in the BCS bowl game,” Thompson said at the MWC media day. “As much as we want to change the system, it is the only system.”
Not if U.S. Rep. Joe Barton has his way. Barton is one of three U.S. House members who have written a bill to force a college football playoff system.
“I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit,” Barton told the Associated Press. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”
This isn’t the first time Congress has gotten involved with the BCS.
Both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees held hearings about the system. This year, there were two additional hearings, and U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch argued for BCS reform in Sports Illustrated and on ESPN.com.
“Sadly, the exclusionary system of crowning a national champion only scratches the surface of the unfairness and questionable legality of the BCS,” Hatch wrote in his ESPN piece published July 14.
Thompson doesn’t believe it’s fair that an automatic qualifying conference gets paid one amount for placing a team in a BCS bowl and the MWC gets paid a smaller amount.
Over the last two seasons, the MWC has re-ceived more than $13.5 million in BCS revenue. The average automatic qualifying conference received an average of $41 million. The other four FBS conferences received an average of $6 million.
“Such economic disparities and anomalies cannot be justified and should not continue,” Thompson said in front of Congress in May. “Many have said the current BCS system ensures a permanent underclass. They are right.”
Thompson said the economic disparities create problems for non-automatic qualifiers in recruiting, facilities, staff salaries and scholarships. It’s something Whittingham said can be a difference on game day.
“Bigger budgets help,” Whittingham said. “It allows you to do more facility-wise and in other areas, but that certainly is something that is one of the primary reasons we feel we should be an automatic qualifying conference, to get a share of the pie.”
Under current BCS rules, any conference can gain automatic qualifying status based on its performance in a four-year cycle. An automatic qualifying conference can also lose its status based on performance in a four-year cycle.
After the most recent cycle ended in 2007, the Big East did not meet automatic qualifying status — average conference champion rank in the top 12 of the BCS standings — but did meet the threshold for receiving a waiver to compete in BCS bowl games for the next two seasons.
Thompson, and the MWC, believe the mark for an automatic qualifying conference should be a .400 winning percentage in non-conference games against other automatic qualifying schools. Using those standards, the MWC would become the only additional automatic qualifying conference.
“If you perform and you win games and you’re playing quality opponents and you’re beating the Oklahomas, the Alabamas, the UCLAs, the Michigans and all the people we’ve beaten, that should be our statement,” Thompson said.
The BCS is for the power players
Rhoads sees Thompson’s plight.
“I would be fighting if I was them without a doubt,” Rhoads said.
But that doesn’t mean he’s against the BCS. Rhoads hasn’t seen a better postseason system presented and until he does he’s willing to stick with the BCS.
“The argument is that it’s not fool proof,” Rhoads said. “That is absolutely right, but it’s awfully close. If the two best teams aren’t playing for the national championship every year, then two of the three or two of the four are.”
Even though Rhoads has coached in automatic qualifying conferences since 1995, he’s never brought up the prospect of a BCS bowl berth with his players, even in 2005, when as defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh, he coached in the Fiesta Bowl.
No, Rhoads only talked about winning a conference cham pionship. Anything else was a bonus.
“We weren’t shouting BCS at the end of every practice,” Rhoads said.
That’s a common theme for coaches. Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen, who was the Florida offensive coordinator the last four years, said at SEC media days that he never talked to the Gators about winning a national championship.
The focus was on the conference championship and the conference championship only, even if the SEC champion has played in three-straight national championship games.
Whittingham uses the same approach at Utah and not just because his Utes aren’t in an automatic qualifying conference. While the nation debated if undefeated Utah deserved to play in the title game last season, Whittingham didn’t bring up the BCS, the national championship or whether the Utes deserved a title shot to his team.
He only talked about the next opponent and the MWC title.
“We preached worry about what you can control and that some things are out of your hands,” Whittingham said. “All you can control is playing your best football every week.”
The BCS and subjective judgment
But is that enough?
ISU secondary coach Chris Ash thinks it should be. He spent the last two years in the MWC at San Diego State and thinks the MWC should get an automatic invite into the BCS.
“When you talk about Utah, TCU, BYU, one of those teams is going to be a potential top-15 team, top-10 team that would have a chance to compete in a BCS game,” Ash said.
When it comes to comparing automatic qualifiers and non-automatic qualifiers, that’s when things get dicey.
Utah has gone undefeated twice in the last four years. Ash isn’t sure if they were one of the two best teams either year. He can’t say either way. All he knows is Utah put together two great teams.
“I guarantee you half the Big 12 teams would not want to play the Mountain West,” Ash said. “So the biggest thing I learned was that it’s a good league and there are a lot of good non-BCS teams.”
Rhoads has seen three out of the four non-automatic qualifying teams win BCS bowl games, including Utah against his Pittsburgh squad in 2005. He knows they are quality programs, but for him the hardest part of evaluating a Boise State or a Utah is figuring out how well they would do in the Pac-10 or Big 12.
“I don’t know if I can take a 12-0 team or an 11-1 team and put them in a different league and say they are going to be 12-0 or 11-1 over 12 football games,” Rhoads said.
Patterson is trying to find that out.
His Horned Frogs are willing to play anyone at any time. He wants to show the country his program is on par with the big boys. So he plays, and routinely beats, teams from the elite conferences.
In the last six years TCU is 8-3 against teams from automatic qualifying leagues, with wins against Oklahoma, a national power, and Texas Tech, a perennial Top 25 program.
Patterson knows that’s all he can do. How people view those results is out of his hands.
“For me, we’ve already proven our worth,” Patterson said. “Out of half of the Division I schools, there is probably going to be one of the top 12 or 15 teams in the country, and what we have to do is do that on a year-to-year basis.”
The BCS and the future
The BCS is here to stay, at least through the latest TV contract.
Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe and SEC commissioner Mike Slive both said universities, athletic departments and conference commissioners are unlikely to support a playoff. ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford took it a step further, saying don’t expect the BCS to change.
“In terms of the next five years, I think what we’re going to see is the BCS, by and large, as it is today, and then we’ll go from there,” Swofford said at ACC media days.
For Whittingham and Patterson, that means winning more games and proving their worth.
For Thompson, that means working toward reform.
For Rhoads and Mullen, that means focusing in on conference championships.
And for Arnaud, it means still taking part in the never ending BCS argument.
“Everyone has an opinion,” Arnaud said. “That isn’t going to change.”
Bobby La Gesse can be reached at (515) 663-6929, or rlagesse@amestrib.com.
BCS revenue distributions
The BCS distributes its money based on how many teams a conference places in a BCS bowl game and if a school is in an automatic qualifying conference or not. Here is a look at how much BCS revenue each conference has received in the past two years.
Conference Amount
Big Ten $45,997,717
SEC $45,997,717
Big 12 $45,975,632
Pac-10 $36,997,717
ACC $36,965,634
Big East $36,965,634
MWC $13,512,800
WAC $12,394,000
C-USA $5,275,200
MAC $3,602,400
Sun Belt $3,591,600
Source: Mountain West Conference documents presented to Congress in May.
| Comments |
| Joe (Utah) The solution is simple. (1) Add two BCS Bowls. Do it through a bid. I like a Jerry Bowl and Lucas Oil Bowl (LO to create a NE BCS game). You would then have 12 spots. (2) Give the MWC AQ status. Even with the MWC having AQ status, the BCS is left with five at-large bids. (3) Allow up to TWO non-AQ schools into BCS games if the meet the current requirements. I don't imagine we would see two non-AQ teams make the BCS if the MWC is an AQ. But if they do, give them access. (4) Clean up the selection process for the at-large games. The computers stink. The polls stink. And too many AQ schools pad schedules. This needs to be addressed. I kind of liked the MWC idea of using a selection committee for this. (5) Add three games beyond the BCS (a plus TWO and NC game). Bring in the top 4 teams from the BCS games. If we use 2008 as an example, last year's Poinsettia Bowl featured what would have likely been the sixth BCS game teams. Using these twelve teams, Florida, Texas, USC, and Utah make the final cut. (5) Give the highest seeded team the right to pick their preferred playoff location (from the six BCS bowl sites). But don't let any team pick a bowl location within 250 miles of their home stadium. What can I say... I want a little neutrality. This combination of changes would accomplish the following: (1) It increases access for both AQ and non-AQ schools. (2) These changes don't diminish the importance of the regular season, nor do they diminish the value of the Bowls. (3) Everybody makes a TON more money with the extra games. 8/28/09 |
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