Bowl Meetings

Latest BCS Proposal Includes Four-Team Playoff Taking Place At Neutral Sites

Published April 25, 2012

Under terms of a proposed four-team college football playoff, the semifinals and national championship game would be "played at neutral sites and the BCS bowl games will be played closer to New Year's Day," according to a source cited by Mark Schlabach of ESPN.com. A proposal to play the semifinal games "at the home stadiums of the higher-seeded teams is all but dead.” The semifinals will “either be hosted by the existing BCS bowl games or open for bidding.” The source said that it “seemed almost certain that the national championship game will be opened to bidding” by existing BCS bowl sites, as well as other cities including Atlanta, Dallas and Indianapolis. The conference commissioners have decided that some school’s stadiums "aren’t large enough to host a national semifinal game and many college towns don’t have enough hotel rooms to accommodate bigger crowds." The source noted that commissioners are “still debating about what to do with the Rose Bowl." Officials from the Rose Bowl would "prefer to keep their traditional matchup between Big Ten and Pac-12 teams." The source said that the commissioners are “eager ‘to take back New Year’s Day,’” preferring to play the semifinal games on Jan.1 and "have the winning teams play in a championship game about a week later." A final decision "isn’t expected this week" (ESPN.com, 4/25). In N.Y., Pete Thamel reports officials “will winnow options for college football’s postseason -- probably to two or three -- to present to university presidents for their spring meetings.” The model getting the most support has the semifinals "rotating among the four so-called BCS bowls -- Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and Rose -- with the site of the national title game determined in a manner similar to that for the Super Bowl.” However, there is “still no single person in charge, no commissioner like David Stern or Roger Goodell to push through hard issues with the good of the game in mind” (N.Y. TIMES, 4/25). CBSSPORTS.com’s Dennis Dodd writes the “three key elements for a new postseason" are access, money and the Rose Bowl (CBSSPORTS.com, 4/25).

TAKING CONTROL: YAHOO SPORTS’ Dan Wetzel wrote under the header, “Bowls’ Extravagant Revenues Are Closely Examined As The NCAA Mulls A Playoff System.” Almost every bowl game "charges schools for everything it can dream up," and that is how the "industry works: cutthroat capitalism that has made these games and the people that run them rich.” Conference commissioners and ADs claim that “extreme profiteering is one of the reasons bowl games could be pushed aside” during these meetings. An AD at a BCS-conference school said, “Everything has changed in the last couple of years. The business practices of the bowl games are of great discussion. … When is enough, enough? There’s a feeling that it’s time to do it ourselves.” Wetzel noted that almost everyone inside college football "enjoys bowl games, but there is apprehension about who is paying the bill.” West Virginia Univ. AD Oliver Luck last year said, “When did our job as a university become supporting the hospitality industry in certain sates?” (SPORTS.YAHOO.com, 4/24).