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SALT LAKE CITY -- Halfway through a four-year deal with ESPN, the Bowl Championship Series needs a new contract in place for the 2014 season. There is just one problem: nobody can agree on what a new plan for that contract should look like.
So this Tuesday through Thursday, all 11 conference commissioners, Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick, BCS officials and TV executives will descend on Hollywood, Fla., for three days of meetings.
They have already said no final decision will be made this week, but a plan has to be in place by the middle of the summer, so the clock is ticking.
A final verdict would likely come after the individual conferences vote on the new plan by the end of June.
At stake is nothing less than college football’s postseason future and how major college football chooses its national champion.
The committee has two objectives in Florida. The first is to decide how to choose a national champion. The second is how to make the postseason more appealing to participants and fans.
The stakes are high and the path forward is far from clear.
According to a BCS memo circulated in the media earlier this month, four options are being floated, though BCS executive director Bill Hancock said just last week, “There’s no leader in the clubhouse on this.”
Minor tweaks to the current system
At first glance, this option would be business as usual in the postseason world, but the reality is far from it.
After enduring years of public criticism and fighting against “BCS” and “non-BCS” labels (the BCS has stoically insisted that every conference is a BCS conference since all agreed to the deal), the BCS would scrap automatic qualifying conferences.
In fact, the concept of BCS bowls would disappear altogether. The Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls would still exist, but they would be like every other bowl, locked into traditional partner conferences.
However, the BCS would not go away. It would field its own set of championship games without any limits on the number of teams from any given conference that could participate. In other words, if the BCS wanted to invite three SEC schools, it could.
There would also be a push to play games closer to New Year’s Day.
About the only thing that would stay the same is teams would be limited to one postseason appearance. No trip to the Rose Bowl followed by a bout in a BCS game, for example.
Plus one
The latest incarnation of the oft-discussed plus-one format would be to play all the traditional bowl games, then pick two teams to play in a championship game.
Nobody is sure exactly how those two teams would be chosen.
Again, there would be no BCS bowls.
Four-team event
Meeting organizers have been careful to avoid any reference to the word “playoff.” Instead, they call this option a “four-team event” with seeded semifinals and a championship game.
If this option is selected, the debate then turns to the question of where to play the games. All three games could be played in bowls. Organizers might also opt to have just the semifinals played in bowls and the championship in a neutral site. The higher-seeded team could host the semis, or every game could be played on a neutral field.
There would be no automatic qualifying conferences, and rankings would most likely determine how the teams are chosen.
This option seems to be the most favored, although there is little consensus on where the semifinal games should be played.
The on-campus semis idea seems to be in jeopardy, since the SEC is already grumbling about sending its teams to cold northern campuses in December, and there are legitimate concerns that some schools might not have the infrastructure or stadium capacity to handle a crush of rabid fans in late December.
Four teams plus
Under this option, the four highest-ranked teams meet in two games, except the Rose Bowl will always keep its traditional ties to the Big Ten and Pac-12. That means if a team or two from those leagues finishes in the top four, it would play the Rose Bowl, with a replacement team or two (fifth- and sixth-place teams) playing in the four- team event semifinals (remember, we can’t say the buzzword “playoff”). Once those three games are played, the top two teams would be selected for participation in the title game, though how they would be selected isn't clear.
The SEC has already stated its opposition to this plan, and many have theorized it was floated by the Big Ten simply to make the Rose Bowl happy.
The Big Ten is concerned any other four-team event would marginalize the Rose Bowl to a consolation game, since the “Granddaddy” would lose at least one of its conference champions in most years, and possibly both.
This way, at least the Pac-12 and Big Ten can say, "We tried, but the other leagues all nixed the deal."
Other postseason issues
The BCS is not the only item being discussed in Florida. The commissioners are also taking a hard look at how to enhance the bowl experience for participants and fans.
One plan is to adopt a committee that would “create bowl opportunities” for anywhere from six to 16 additional teams. The new committee’s goal would be to line up games that would be “evenly matched and attractive contests that make geographic sense for the participants.”
For its part, the NCAA seems ready to become even less involved in the postseason college football business.
At a separate meeting on Thursday, the NCAA board of directors will discuss a proposal to discontinue licensing bowl games but establish minimum standards.
Were that proposal to be adopted, conferences would decide on their own whether a 6-6 team is eligible. That could put some of the current 35 bowls’ futures in jeopardy. Teams often lose money by participating in less prestigious, sparsely attended games, and many speculate that conferences would opt out if given the chance.
GoDaddy.com’s racy commercials have also prompted questions about regulating title sponsors. As a result, some new regulations on bowl names could emerge from Thursday’s NCAA board meeting.
Revenue distribution
Of course, the elephant in the room is the millions of dollars being bandied about. Whatever playoff — sorry, “event” — format is chosen could more than double the amount of revenue the BCS generates. Minimum estimates say $350 million in 2014, but the actual sum could be much higher. Even the minimum is a substantial jump from the already hefty $150 million the BCS is currently doling out each year.
Right now, the six automatic qualifier conferences receive around $22 million each, while non-AQ leagues cash one $13 million check to share. Notre Dame gets $6.1 million when it makes a BCS game and $1.8 million even when it does not.
No final plan is in place, but it is safe to say unequal BCS revenue distribution will continue and the distance between the "haves" and "have nots" will continue to grow.
It looks like one criterion for revenue distribution will be market size, which helps explain why the Mountain West and Conference USA have been trying to merge their leagues. It could also justify recent expansions in which leagues have been snagging teams outside their traditional geographic footprint over the past few years.
With television executives (i.e., ESPN) sitting at the table, expect TV ratings to be part of the final equation as well. That means Notre Dame will likely continue to receive special treatment and the Big Ten and SEC conferences will be major players. The Fighting Irish still draw giant ratings for their games, BTN has been a phenomenal success for the Big Ten, and the SEC continues to generate massive ratings and revenue.
Local impact
With all the unrest with the current BCS system and declining interest in college football for the first time in years, the winds of change finally seem to be blowing toward a playoff of some kind.
While proponents of the current system argue a playoff would render the regular season meaningless, it could allow for more scheduling flexibility and be good news for local teams.
BYU is slated to play bowls in San Diego in 2012 and San Francisco in 2013. If the proposal to have a committee arrange bowl pairings materializes for 2014, BYU’s large fan base and solid TV ratings could help it land exciting matchups in great locales, though a December trip to sunny San Diego is nothing to complain about. Likewise, the Utes could benefit from intriguing regional contests, rather than facing off against uninterested opponents from the East Coast.
In addition, neither team would need to be as concerned about picking up a loss or two in the regular season. That could make it easier for BYU and Utah to continue their traditional rivalry and be more willing to schedule marquee nonconference matchups.
Right now, what college football’s postseason looks like at the end of the week is anyone’s guess.
"I want a decision that will benefit the game for the next 10 to 15 years, whatever it is. Whatever decision we make, there will be people who don't like it when we work something out," BCS executive director Hancock said. "That's just part of the game. But I want to come away thinking, 'You know what, we did the best thing for college football.'"
It sounds good on paper. Time will tell if Hancock and the BCS actually deliver.
David Gale is a BYU graduate and former television news producer. See more of David’s thoughts at http://planetbyu.com or follow him on twitter @planetbyu.
