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BCS: More equitable? Or more of the same?
By The Associated Press
MIAMI BEACH � Texas Christian and LSU in the Sugar Bowl? Boise State and
Texas in the Fiesta Bowl? Marshall and Miami in the Orange Bowl?
As strange as they may seem, those matchups are now more likely to happen.
The Bowl Championship Series agreed to add a fifth game Sunday, increasing
access for schools not part of college football's most lucrative postseason
system.
It may mean a chance at big bucks for teams in the Mid-American Conference,
the Mountain West Conference, the Western Athletic Conference and Conference
USA. But the changes do not guarantee that a team outside the six BCS
conferences � the Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10 � will play
in one of the elite bowls.
"This is still a merit-based system," said Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer,
a member of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee. "We have done our
level best not to dilute the quality of play in BCS games."
The fifth bowl is subject to final approval based on market viability, but
all indications point to it being in place when the new BCS contract takes
effect before the 2006 season.
"This agreement is a significant victory for college sports and higher
education," NCAA president Myles Brand said.
Smaller schools have long complained that the current BCS system makes it
impossible for them to win the national championship and puts them at
financial and recruiting disadvantages.
The BCS Presidential Oversight Committee and the Coalition for Athletics
Reform agreed to tweak the system after a six-hour meeting Sunday that
capped nine months of discussions and may have ended threats of
congressional intervention.
"It's a significant improvement from where we are right now," said Tulane
president Scott Cowen, the leader of the Coalition for Athletics Reform that
fought to change the current system.
The champions of the six BCS conferences will maintain automatic berths in
one of the five games. The remaining four spots will be at-large berths to
be decided by a complex formula based largely on national rankings.
Frohnmayer said the Big East will retain its spot in the BCS despite losing
football powerhouse Miami as well as Virginia Tech and Boston College.
The committee and the BCS agreed on access rules for non-BCS schools, but
refused to give details until after the changes are presented to the
conferences.
Cowen said that using the new system, a non-BCS school would have played in
a BCS bowl in four of the last six seasons. He declined to say which teams
or which seasons.
The current BCS bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange. One of those
bowls pits the top two teams in the BCS standings in a championship game,
which will be the Orange Bowl next season. The Rose, Fiesta and Sugar host
the other games.
Frohnmayer said the fifth bowl would join in the title game rotation. He
also said the Rose Bowl would retain its long-standing ties to the Big Ten
and Pac-10 champions during years in which it does not host the title game.
The other bowls also would have the chance to protect conference ties.
Frohnmayer said existing bowls probably will get the first shot at becoming
the fifth BCS bowl. Cities expected to show immediate interest include
Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Orlando and San Diego.
"We are envisioning a bowl of equal stature in terms of its command of
television audiences and its desirability from a standpoint of teams,"
Frohnmayer said. "Whether that would come from the volunteering of an
existing bowl system and its own structure or the creation of a new bowl,
that's something we simply can't determine at this point."
The BCS bowls generate more than $110 million a year for the big
conferences. The BCS gives about $6 million a year to smaller conferences.
Frohnmayer said those figures should increase under the new format.
Since ABC owns the current television rights to BCS games, Frohnmayer said
the network would get a chance to negotiate a new contract under the
five-bowl format.
"It's our hope that the interest in the series will be heightened by the
availability of one more game," he said. "It's our hope that this whole new
system will generate more revenue."
�2003 The Associated Press. Bonesville.net contributed to this report. All rights reserved.
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02.23.07 10:40 AM
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