Rose Bowl gives in, paving way for eventual change to postseason
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- DeLoss Dodds had just called out Jim Delany -- the equivalent in college athletics' of Iron Man taunting the Hulk. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
You take your news any way you can get it at these annual BCS meetings, all-day hall waits for administrators to say next to nothing. Let's just say Dodds this time helped frame the news of the day.
The Texas AD, a longtime playoff advocate, conveniently blasted the Rose Bowl -– and by association Delany, the Big Ten commissioner -- perceived as the biggest impediment toward a college football playoff.
"The only way it's going to get fixed," Dodds told USA Today, "is for the rest of the country to have a playoff of some kind and let them [Rose] do their own deal. And then after five years, their coaches would go berserk because they're not in the mix for a national championship. And they'd have to join it."
Turns out, Dodds is a little behind the times. Tuesday will be known as the day the Rose Bowl gave in. Maybe just as little. And not officially. But it was the day when Delany, the biggest public defender of the Rose, sounded a lot like the stuffy ol' Granddaddy was joining the party.
"I would say there is an expectation there will be significant change," Delany said of the postseason in general.
What he's saying without saying it is that the Rose/Pac-12/Big Ten won't bust that playoff party. At least that's the way it looks. They're in. All the way. Get used to it. That's what the last 10 years have been about. Five times since January 2002 "foreign" teams have played in Pasadena. In the previous 55 years it was only the Big Ten and Pac-8/10.
Do their own deal? That was never going to happen. The relationship between the Rose, Pac-12, Big Ten and the rest of college football is symbiotic. There can't be playoff without one-fifth of FBS and the Rose would be diminished if it somehow wasn't in the championship rotation.
In that sense, Dodds was right. The Pac-12/Big Ten coaches would lose their minds if they weren't in the playoff mix.
"Figuratively, we do have a championship game every year," said Rose CAO Kevin Ash. But we seem to be over the assertion that the Granddaddy is the end-all, be-all. Lloyd Carr once said he preferred a trip to Pasadena over playing for a national championship. That kind of summed up the Rose partnership. Now, it is actually considering becoming a "pass-through" game, a semifinal, a part of the process toward a national championship instead of a stand-alone game.
When a playoff is actually finalized -- which may not be until early July -- it's going to be great. It looks like four teams for sure now. The commissioners spent four hours Tuesday just discussing how to select those teams. There is no going back, it seems.
"The BCS as we know it with the exact policies will not continue," said BCS executive director Bill Hancock.
It's possible we could come out of the conclusion of the meetings on Thursday with only two or three models left to ponder. It looks like the bowls are going to be involved at least in the semifinals. Brett McMurphy is reporting an interesting "flex" option that could automatically put a bowl into the semifinals if its anchor team(s) ranked in the top four.
"I'm sure the Rose Bowl isn't the end-all for everybody," Delany said. "[But] it's really important to us. It's one of the top-10 most important single-day television properties in the world and it performs. It's part of the fabric.
"I want to make sure any change we have, it's manageable and is a little bit predictable."
Considering the sweeping change, Delany made a passing reference to "Egyptian Spring" which was Twitter fodder before he left the Westin Diplomat. The term is actually "Arab Spring", which refers to the protests that led to the toppling of governments in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.
"Not all change," he warned, "is manageable. It just doesn't flower into this beautiful environment without some consequences."
There is still the issue of what kind of special access -- if any -- to give to Notre Dame and the WACs and MACs of the world. There is a coming windfall of rights fees that have to be distributed fairly. That was not discussed on Tuesday, which shows how far we still have to go.
"What that has injected into the game dwarfs anything that will come out of this," Delany said of TVs' interest.
The commissioner, posturing nicely in favor of his anchor bowl, could end up telling his constituents: This is the best we can do. The Rose Bowl as a national semifinal. The Rose Bowl as a national championship game. The Rose Bowl without a Big Ten and/or Pac-12 team. The Rose Bowl not even called the Rose Bowl in those scenarios.
As they read the morning paper, Dodds' blast drew some chuckles in the commissioners' meeting room but nothing more. Texas' Iron Man had flexed. The Big Ten's Hulk posed.
"DeLoss and I have always disagreed on this going back 15-20 years," Delany said. "I'm a First Amendment guy. I'm a friend of DeLoss. I respect the differences in disagreement."
College football moved on Tuesday in better shape.
Status quo is dead for BCS, but it's up for debate what's still alive
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- BCS executive director Bill Hancock, for once, didn't mince words.
"I can officially say that the 'status quo' is off the table," Hancock said.
What is still on the table? Sit down. This could take a while.
After Wednesday's BCS meetings at the Westin Diplomat, the 11 FBS commissioners are considering three options on how to structure college football's new playoff format beginning in 2014. However, each option also contains different variations.
Rose Bowl gives in, paving way for eventual change to postseason
The most likely format, as CBSSports.com reported Tuesday, is a four-team playoff held at neutral sites, most likely the current BCS bowl sites.
"The majority of us want four teams [in a playoff]," a commissioner said. "However, we have no consensus idea how we're going to pick them."
There are two ways to pick the four-team field: the top-four ranked teams after the conference championships are played or the four highest ranked conference champions.
SEC commissioner Mike Slive prefers the four highest ranked teams, because his league conceivably could have half of the four-team field every year. The SEC would have last year.
"This is not a tournament," Slive said. "It's to figure out who the best teams are and let them play for the national championship."
However, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott said he is "warm" to limiting the four-team field to conference champions only.
"It's hard to say there's a favorite model because certain circumstances work for some people and don't work for others," Scott said.
Whether it's the four-highest ranked teams or the four-highest ranked conference champions, they still must decide how to seed the teams. Use the current BCS formula or use a selection committee?
"I think [a committee] is worth looking at," Slive said. "I think in the final analysis, we need to look at the entire process. That's a matter that applies to any format."
Scott said he wasn't necessarily in favor of using a committee.
"There are a lot of open issues about how you select the four teams in it," Scott said. "Use the BCS standings, conference champions, [do you make] some change the way computers work that emphasizes strength of schedule, a committee? We probably spent four hours talking about that issue." While Hancock and the commissioners have said repeatedly in the past three months their desire to move the championship game closer to Jan. 1, that may not be a realistic possibility. One discussion was about playing the semifinals on the Saturday of the final weekend of the NFL's season and then having the national title game nine days later on Monday night.
If this format is in place in 2014, the semifinals would be Dec. 29 with the national title game on Jan. 8, 2015.
While it appears the semifinals and final would be held at bowl sites or neutral sites, Scott said the possibility of the semifinals being played on campus is not dead.
"We spent three to four hours the past two days if it's a four team playoff: home hosted vs. neutral sites. We wouldn't have spent three or four hours on it if it was dead.
"In fairness, it's probably dead for some people. Just as neutral sites are dead for some people."
Having the semifinals on campus is all but dead to Slive, whose league has won six consecutive BCS titles. He believes holding the semifinals on campus presents a "competitive disadvantage.
"The NCAA tournament is not played on home floors -- for a reason," Slive said.
Scott said if a four-team playoff is chosen, the selection of the four teams needs to be "more credible, a more objective, fair system that balances strength of schedule.
"We don't all play over the same course," Scott said. "We play a different caliber ... some play nine conference games, some eight. Some play stronger out-of-conference competition, some tend to not. They just want to get home games."
Scott didn't say which conference he was referring to, but he didn't have to -- their initials are S-E-C.
Sources also told CBSSports.com that one of the many formats the BCS is considering is a model that would allow the bowl games the flexibility to host a semifinal game -- if it's not scheduled -- if its anchor team qualifies for the playoff. In other words, if the Rose Bowl is not scheduled to host a semifinal game, but the Big Ten or Pac-12 champion qualifies for a four-team playoff, then the Rose Bowl could host a semifinal. This also would be the case for an SEC champion and the Sugar Bowl or a Big 12 team and the Fiesta Bowl.
Also, the commissioners discussed the bowl teams that lose their anchor teams would be allowed to replace those teams based on a "free market system." In other words, they would be able to take whatever team they wanted that would fill their stadium, meaning the smaller market schools would likely never get selected for the major bowls.
This, of course, is only one of several possibilities.
The good news is that Hancock said he expects the commissioners on Thursday to provide him with two or three options they can take back to the university presidents this summer. The NCAA Presidential Oversight Committee, which has the final say, could then have the recommended playoff format by July 4.
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Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:09 am
