Well, here’s a step in the right direction. A small step, but maybe we’ll have a college football playoff, with a Final Four like we do with college basketball. A December Delirium to complement the March Madness?
NCAA President Mark Emmert says he would support a four-team playoff in college football – as long as the field doesn’t grow. Well that last point isn’t very encouraging.
Here’s more from the AP Sports:
After giving his annual state of the association speech Thursday in Indianapolis, Emmert acknowledged he would back a small playoff if that’s what Bowl Championship Series officials decide to adopt.
“The notion of having a Final Four approach is probably a sound one,” Emmert said when asked what he heard coming out of New Orleans this week. “Moving toward a 16-team playoff is highly problematic because I think that’s too much to ask a young man’s body to do. It’s too many games, it intrudes into the school year and, of course, it would probably necessitate a complete end to the bowl system that so many people like now.”
Emmert spoke two days after the 11 Bowl Championship Series conferences met to discuss possible changes to the system starting in 2014, but there is no consensus yet.
The winds of change certainly are blowing. Even BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said Tuesday that 50-60 different possibilities were presented during a meeting in New Orleans, where the Alabama Crimson Tide just beat LSU in the BCS title game Monday night. Hancock anticipates it will take another five to seven meetings to reach a conclusion this July. Why the change now? Because television ratings suffered this past BCS season. All the BCS games’ ratings were down this year.
Lots of rules will likely change; and they should. The automatic qualifier could be gone, no more limit on number of teams from one conference.
Another proposal is the “plus-one” approach, creating two national semifinals and a championship game played one week later. The original proposal, made in 2008 by the commissioners of the Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference, was emphatically shot down by the leaders of the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big East, Big 12 and Notre Dame. However, a lot of those guys have come around now.
Even Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney, perhaps the most staunch obstructionist of all, is allegedly leaning less of a hard line these days.
Get ready- change could be coming sooner rather than later.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports
A Fulbright scholar and MBA, Banks has appeared on live radio all over the world; and he’s a member of the Football Writers Association of America, U.S. Basketball Writers Association, and Society of Professional Journalists. The President of the United States follows him on Twitter (@Paul_M_BanksTSB) You should too.