One I know for certain, the other, I remember seeing somewhere and can't remember exactly where. I'll have to do some digging on the latter, but anyway here goes:

1. I'm pretty certain that the Big Televen & Pac 10 aren't happy with the way the Rose Bowl works currently.
2. The Big Televen & the Pac 10 are getting significantly less BCS $$$'s than the SEC, the Big 12, or the ACC. I don't know where I remember seeing this, but I'm pretty sure this is a fact. I'll have to get a link to the information, but it would definitely explain why the Big Televen & the Pac 10 aren't too happy with the BCS and maybe looking to pull out. It also explains why the BCS might be undergoing some changes too soon.

I'd be interested in seeing those numbers for item 2. I don't believe that is true. The ACC has always gotten only one slot. The Pac 10 hasn't gotten too many extras, but normally a B10+1 school gets one of the slots. ABC almost always pushes for a B10+1 or SEC school unless they are forced to take a B12 or Pac school.

The Rose Bowl was easily the highest paying bowl before the BCS. Perhaps the relative gain is better for the other conferences. Before the BCS predecessor, the ACC didn't have a guaranteed slot in one of the big bowls.

Obviously, they miss the traditional matchup in Pasadena.

I know that it isn't going to happen, but this is reason number one that I like the "BCS Plus" plan. In that scenario, the tradition of the big bowl games can remain in place, particularly Big Ten vs. Pac Ten in the Rose, and the SEC champion going to the Sugar. With a full-blown playoff out of the question, BCS + 1 is, in my view, the best way to balance tradition with declaring as undisputed a champion that the bowl system can provide.

What teams are available in the West to the Pac-10 that are comparable to the UCLAs, USCs, UAs, ASUs, Stanford, and UW? BYU?

It would be difficult to expand to 12 and stage a championship game. Perhaps if USC had been able to win a conference championship game, the BCS formula would have worked in their favor and they would have been chosen to go to the Sugar Bowl instead of Oklahoma.

The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that the Big Ten & the Pac sould opt out of the BCS & go back to the Rose Bowl. The BCS has simply not accomplished what it set out to do, i.e. have an undisputed national championship.

Adding a game a week after the bowls will not accomplish this either. College football is too much in love with won-loss records. The idea that you can eliminate teams by a vote or a computer formula is what's at the heart of the problem.

A national championship play-off will need a minimum of 8 teams so that things can be decided on the field. Any other method eliminates legitimate contenders. It's one thing to seed teams by committee or vote but it's an entirely different matter to eliminate teams who haven't even played each other.

A few years ago when we had the Nebraska fiasco, the Big 12 had 4 teams in the top 8 in the polls. Just think about what that means! It's amazing that Nebraska ran that gauntlet with only one loss while Miami was coasting through the Big East

To take a little simpler scenario, imagine that the 3 best teams in the country were all in the same conference one year. Let's imagine that they all play each other & all split, so all 3 end the season with one loss. Meanwhile in that same season, Miami & Florida State go through the Big East & the ACC respectivley undefeated. Well, of course they would play for the national championship because they are undefeated.

Who's to say that Ohio State wasn't the best team in the country this year . . . or USC the year before? They didn't even get a shot. At least USC had a poll they could point to this year.

Four teams won't correct the problem. As long as teams play different schedules, there's no legitimate way to compare their accomplishments other than on the field. Whether it's done by computers or by voting in polls, it's still all hypothetical. It's not real; it's "virtual reality." Being undefeated against a completely different schedule is completely meaningless regardless of how many losses another team has.

Unless there is a play-off of conference champions, nothing else will have any legitimacy. It there's no legitimate alternative, why shouldn't the Big Ten & Pac Ten go back to their traditional rivaley & whoop it up at the Parade of Roses?

It's a matter of sticking with lucrative, traditional, and festive bowls, like the Rose or go with an 8 to 16 team play-off. What the BCS has attempted to do, and some years it may have been deemed successful with the factors that be, is stage a clear "national championship game" within the major bowl system.
Few want to eliminate the bowls, at least not the top ten or twelve of them. However, to pick a clear-cut, on field, champion, then a model similar to what the 1-AA does will need to be adapted.
There is some controversy about the !-AA playoffs: (a) somebody who was not chosen as part of the 16 team format thinks they should have been, (b) much of the playoff games are played on a team's home field, often providing them a distinct advantage, and (c) some championship games are staged in far removed places from where the playing teams orginate, thus less than enthusiastic attendance (I remember Ga Southern and Furman (SC) playing a championship game in someplace like Idaho/Montana-------wouldn't the game have been more practical if played, say in Atlanta, Charleston, or Columbia?
Bowls mean big money and provide many a fun trip for an extra game and exposure. College Presidents say playoffs would detract from "academics", but in totality, it would impact few teams, and it can be pointed to that 1-AA and other lower divisions do it relatively successfully.
Bowls will be around a long time. Whether the BCS can come up with a plan that is more inclusive, concise, proficient, and less controversial, remains to be seen. Some changes will be tweaked out due to reactionary problems. It will evolve, but not at the pace and level of satisfaction for all.

Bullet, I believe I saw that somewhere on www.secfanatics.com. I'm going to try to dig some over there tonite and tommorrow and see what I come up with. BTW, be warned: secfanatics can be a very brutal message board at times, so it's best just to browse it or let an SEC fan like myself handle those goons. ;D (Not all SEC fans see eye to eye. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the most unpopular SEC fan over there. :-/ )

Interesting thread guys,

A few things we know for sure:

1) The Big10/Pac10 were dragged into the BCS arrangements kicking and screaming. They traditionally viewed themselves as "above" the other conferences, relished their traditional alliance in the Rose Bowl, and it was only the clear financial advantages (the tv money) that the BCS offered that brought them aboard.

2) The Rose Bowl has been the unhappiest of the BCS-affiliated organizsations, and has a completely separate contract with the BCS. It has repeatedly made its unhappiness known to the Big10/Pac10 folks, particularly Delany, who, the media reported some months ago, was carrying around in his briefcase RoseBowl suggestions for improving the BCS to assure more traditional Big10/Pac10 meetings in the RoseBowl

3) The recent "BCS championship status "was a laugh, and clearly exposed all its inadequacies to the Big10 and Pac10. Coaches in these two conferences were openly derisive of the arrangements that had brought these circumstances about.

4) Although the Big10 official offices are traditionally the most tight-lipped about both NotreDame and BCS, comments by coaches I read in the midwest media from all around the Big10 favor the traditional four bowls followed by one BCS championship game.

I don't think the solution will be as radical as pulling out the BCS, that would lolse too much "face" for these two conferences. But there is a strong retro movement out there, as I have reported before, and my sense of all the tinkering is they will restore more traditions to the bowl games.

8-)

I would add to that last part, "when possible and within the bowl structure." Even then, I think the BCS was devised more as a marketing scheme and less as a means to clarify the national champion.

As discussed time and again last month, college football has built its reputation in part because of the heated debate that comes in years without clear champions. Limitations on games and season schedules prohibit the ability of things to sort themselves out naturally, and the status quo is doing well enough for the powers that be to refrain from reinventing the system.

All the BCS really does, in my eyes, is repackage and increase the hype leading up to the bowl games. Remember the build up for the BCS rankings each week? The talk of TCU crashing the party? The speculation of who'd play whom? It's safe to assume the general make up of BCS bowl game participants would be roughly the same had there been no BCS, except now there's a little more $ in the pot because of those initials and as a result those on the outside feel even more outside. Maybe it's just me, but I suspect that the TV folks would place a little less value on the bowls if they were not able to have this tidy, pretty packaging for these marquee games.

Perhaps this is where the Rose Bowl feels slighted; It didn't need the extra hype, and to date the only extra attention the game has recieved is of the negative side as part of this "Bowl Consortium Series."

Last I heard, everyone finds the BCS plus 1 appealing save for one issue; What if the regular bowl match up features the two best and only undefeated teams in the land? How fair is it to ask that winner to play one more game against a 2-loss #3 or 4 just because we've already sold the commercial rights?

Come to think of it, that might be just what college football needs: More controversy!

If college football needs more controversy, then why were the Oklahoma v LSU TV ratings the second worse for the #1 v #2 game?

I think the fans paying attention to this are smarter than all this. The BCS will run itself into the ground thinking otherwise.

If the Big Ten and PAC 10 were locked into the Rose Bowl every year, and no other schools outside those conferences have access to it, you have a BCS situation right there.

Nothing short of a playoff including all Division 1-A conference winners will remove a "BCS" effect, no matter what you do.

The bowls separate Division 1-A football from every other collegiate sport, because they want to invite teams based in part on name recognition and fan support. Because of the monies involved, the will isn't there to create a fair system.

Don't discount culture in the bonding of the Pac Ten and the Big Ten. There is a lot of mutual respect that goes into that annual meeting in Pasadena, and frankly IMHO almost no anomosity (even during eras when one conference or the other dominated the Rose Bowl).

Eliminate the Big East from discussion due to its age, instablitity of membership of members, and questionable status and look at the other BCS conferences.

Culturally the B10 and Pac Ten are joined at the hip. If I had to pick a color for both, it would be blue (with a reddish hue definitely showing up in the XII, SEC, ACC). Both the west coast and the Great Lakes are far more urbanized regions than those of the other conferences. And both the Pac Ten and Big Ten are (again: IMHO) as interested in their academic reputations as they are with their athletic ones (and those reputations are excellent). The B10 is in no rush to go to 12 (and, just as importantly, is shying away from a conf championship game if it does) and would only expand with a quality athletic/academic institution. Meanwhile on the coast, Cal, Stanford, SC, and UCLA, for whatever concerns they have on the field, are hell bent to not allow any other Calif schools into the conference not because of their ahtletics, but because they don't measure up to the LA/Bay Area academic heavyweights.

The Big Ten and the Pac Ten are different than the rest of the BCS landscape. And (here's another personal opinion) less fired up over being the #1 king-of-the-universe that many their fans would be happy at the end of the season just being the best in a 21 school fraternity of d**ned good academic and athletic institutions.

And I've got to add here that almost any BigTen alum would much rather travel to Pasadena for a Rose Bowl against a Pac10 team, even if they are not playing for the national championship, than travel to Miami, Orleans, Phoenix, or anywhere else, EVEN FOR A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, thank you. People I talk to in BigTen country long for a retro rebelion and restoration to the old bowl system, lol. BCS has not worked at all.

8-)