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(Update: the new college football playoff system has an official name, and it’s “college football playoff”)
So they went literal. To the point. No frills. Short terse direct prose. Like an Ernest Hemingway novel.
Like the book: “Death to the BCS ,” and it’s officially here as the University presidents announced approval of a 4-team seeded playoff for college football last summer.
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ESPN and the group that will administer the new college football playoff have reached an agreement in principle to present the playoff games and selected other games for 12 years on an exclusive basis across ESPN’s platforms. The agreement will begin after the 2014 regular season (including January 2015) and continue through after the 2025 regular season (January 2026).
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Is 2014 the end of the term BCS?
Notre Dame A.D. Jack Swarbrick had an answer. Sort of.
“I have no idea, from time to time we’ve touched on that, and some people want to change, but it’s a brand that’s highly recognized, I would guess for the foreseeable future, whether we cause it to happen or not, it’ll be the term people are using,” he said.
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The BCS meetings in Chicago concluded minutes ago with some great news for college football fans: a consensus was reached regarding the four team playoff proposal. A four team seeded playoff model was completely agreed upon, and now the conference commissioners will take it to their University Presidents and Athletic Directors.
(update: the Presidents have met in D.C. and approved the plan)
It appears this model will get approval, as there seems to be a lot of momentum behind it. Most details were not disseminated to the media, as the conference commissioners mostly agreed that they “didn’t want their University Presidents to learn the details by reading the paper.”
They want to tell them the details in person first.Today’s announcement came in the Camelot Room of the Hotel Intercontinental. Fitting, since this was a “round table” of the most powerful commissioners in college football.
Here’s the official statement, which was just read to the media by Notre Dame A.D. Jack Swarbrick.
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There were a lot of topics on the table of discussion in last week’s Big 10 meetings. First and foremost, is the rapid move towards a four team playoff in college football, which could get here in a couple years. I asked Northwestern Athletic Director Jim Phillips what his biggest takeaways were from the meetings.
“Couple things – tremendous collaboration between all 12 institutions in trying to get to the “right place” in current landscape and our complete confidence and trust in Commissioner Delany,” he said.
No doubt about it, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany (the second highest paid commissioner, behind only the Pac-12’s Larry Scott) is one of the most powerful men in college football. He’s a big reason we’re getting close to having a true playoff, as his getting on board with the hybrid bowl/playoff idea will be critical to having a final four.
Here’s the statement by the eleven college football conference commissioners and the Notre Dame Athletics Director. I trimmed it way down to eliminate all the cliches, corporatespeak, tautologies and double talk.
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All 11 college football conference commissioners met in Dallas for two days, with the session concluding today. Nothing concrete emerged from it, but they all seem to get it that a BCS replacement is needed. Things are finally moving in that direction, too, with recent reports indicating it’ll likely begin with a “plus-one” system.
Via SB Nation:
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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:
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The Big Ten Council of Presidents/Chancellors (COP/C) met recently to discuss conference expansion.A statement was issued by the Big Ten office today. It was a rather dry statement; and it didn’t say a whole lot, so let’s quickly get through it and move on to the fun stuff.
In response to a number of recent media inquiries received by several Big Ten Presidents and Chancellors regarding the likelihood of further expansion by the Big Ten, the COP/C would like to reiterate that it will not be actively engaged in conference expansion at this time, or at any time in the foreseeable future, barring a significant shift in the current intercollegiate athletic landscape.
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Former Purdue Boilermakers and Indianapolis Colts quarterback Mark Herrmann was the first to throw for both 8,000 and 9,000 career passing yards. That record has since been broken numerous times, but he’s a perfect example of how the game of college football has evolved. And the perfect person to talk with on where the game is evolving next. I had such a discussion with Herrmann on the day he was enshrined into the college football hall of fame.
“I’m not sure we’re done with Big Ten expansion, there could be a couple more down the line,” he said.
“There was talk of Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse. We would have loved to see Notre Dame come in. That would have solved a lot of issues I think. But I’m not sure that’s going to happen. A number of schools have been bandied about, but it may be a year or two before anything else happens,” Hermann continued.
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The Department of Justice is currently investigating the BCS, the OPEC of big money sports, and NCAA President Mark Emmert and BCS Director Bill Hancock are doing little more than playing the denial and ignorance game.
The Fiesta Bowl’s egregious offenses (and the slap-on-the-wrist ruling that followed) have called attention to corruption within the BCS. And now the Feds are investigating the cartel’s possible involvement in anti-trust behavior. This is very much about economics and markets, and less about football. So this article continues first and foremost in the vein of “the dismal science,” and not the gridiron.
You don’t need a MBA to understand this, but since I am one, I’m actually really excited about this story and hope to convey that ebullience over to you the reader in breaking this down.
A must read comes from this ESPN article by Andy Schwarz, who drafted the economic arguments in a letter recently sent to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting an antitrust investigation into college football’s Bowl Championship Series, which the DOJ cited in recent inquiries to the NCAA questioning the lack of a playoff system.
By Paul M. Banks
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As you might have just heard, the Fiesta Bowl will be allowed to remain part of the Bowl Championship Series, though it must pay a $1 million fine (which sounds like a lot of money, but really isn’t in the grand spectrum when you consider their annual earnings history) for apparent illegal campaign contributions and inappropriate spending.
The BCS presidential oversight committee made the “slap-on-the-wrist” style decision Wednesday, which allows the Fiesta Bowl to continue to be part of the system for deciding a college football national champion. The NCAA also added that they will increase supervision of the bowl, which means…probably not much, except they’re now on double secret probation.
It was the Fiesta Bowl’s malfeasance and corruption that has brought more attention to the cartel that is the BCS. The Department of Justice is currently investigating the OPEC of big money sports, and NCAA President Mark Emmert and BCS Director Bill Hancock are doing little more than playing the denial and ignorance game.
By Paul M. Banks
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