Pounder and FF,

You make good points regarding the negative inertia for change.

The current set-up involving the entrenched bowls is tied to tourism, and selling packages to travel to these various sites. The 3-4 week lull between announcement of bowl pairings and the date of the game helps the host city target customers from the participating schools / alumni and sell tickets and book hotel rooms. So the host city / bowl committee naturally viewsvarious factors as threatening to the financial success of the current set-up.

For them to get on board a new system, they almost need to be "bought out", with some sort of financial guarantees.

Why are the college presidents in bed with the current bowl set-up ? It must relate to goodies that come back their way.... I'm removed from this, so I've never seen it in action, but logic says the school administrators & schools reap a financial windfall, which causes them to dig in their heels and defend this screwed-up system.

Occasionally college president's will make statements like "the season is too long already - it's brutal on these kids !" Then why has the regular season crept up from 10 to 11 to 12 games ? Just so all schools can schedule a pathetic warm-up "body-bag" game in September vs. a Div I-AA team (or so it would appear), and generate some more revenue, without a substantial risk of losing a game ?

Or "it takes away from their studies !" And so how do we justify March Madness, where BB team, band, and students travel on 4 consecutive weekends (actually maybe Thursday thru Sunday to a conference tourney, NCAA sub-regionals, NCAA regionals, and NCAA Final Four) ?

It's all a smokescreen, and its all about money, and the agent of change in this entire Div I-A football thing will be - MORE MONEY !

I see the source of the MORE MONEY ultimately being the TV networks, who look at the highly-successful BB tourney, look at football mess, start to notice the flat or dwindling interest in BCS games not involving #1 and #2, and say: "WHAT IF we offer to buy out the stake-holders in the current set-up, and transform this thing into a bigger money-maker..." It seems inevitable....

Or am I missing something ?

Dave, I think that the key difference is that the 6 conferences own the BCS. The NCAA owns the basketball tournament. The BB tournament pays a huge proportion of NCAA expenses because they keep about half the money from the tournament. The schools do not benefit from the tournament in proportion to the money that it earns even though it earns far more $$ than the football bowls. The BCS schools & conferences keep all the money from the bowls. NONE goes to the NCAA. Basically it's a welfare system for the football conferences, which do not pay their fare share of NCAA overhead. A fb tournament would be owned by the NCAA & they would take their pound of flesh before the proceeds were distributed to the schools. So, what's in it for the universities? Power over distribution of the post-season football $$. 100% of a smaller $$ pool is better than maybe 1/3 of a bigger pie. Sorry for mixing my metaphors. ;)

Well, you're right, the big 6 (BE/ND, ACC, Big 10, Big XII, SEC, and PAC) are now driving the bus. So they will fight like crazy to resist anything that reduces their revenue.

So hypothetically, if you had a 16 team tourney, and you let in 11 conf. champs, 5 slots might be claimed by conferences not currently having BCS auto-bids (CUSA, MWC, MAC, WAC, and SBC. You'd have to think all the at-large would be to teams now in "BCS" conferences, so they retain 11/16 of the first round prize money, and likely a higher percentage going forward.

Assuming you are correct that the NCAA would siphon off some money too, the big boys will want to be compensated for that loss of revenue as well.

But back to your earlier point, in an ideal set-up, a lot of these minor revenue streams pale in potential to the windfall that could be realized in terms of TV money.
If structured right this could be huge - and the TV rights to a tourney (where there is fan interest in every game) would seem to be MUCH larger than the current BCS set-up.

I think ABC sent the BCS guys a message, by pulling out (they retain the Rose Bowl). Let us help restructure this mess into a 4+1 or 5+1, or we can't just keep throwing our money at this.

Unfortunately, FOX appears willing to jump in, without seeking some leverage over the format. Sad.

Next time the package is up for bids would a TV network consider making an unsolicited offer to take over the format, put up the NCAA back in charge as the sanctioning body, in exchange for huge $$$ ?

It seems somehow inevitable, just due to the economic potential sitting there wasted.

Granted, a I-A football playoff would be ground-breaking in and of itself, but isn't there an NCAA championship requirement that no more than half of the participants have received automatic berths?

Arizona Republic reported in today's newspaper:

US Senator from California Barbara Boxer states that congress may need to oversee the situtation to get answers from the BCS.

Everyone keeps saying that US Congress has more important things to worry about including the terroist war, economy, etc.

Well the public voted the President back in office so guess not to concerned with the current International situation.

If BCS is not all about economics, then why the fuss with money.

Sen Boxer want to introduce a bill to abolish the BCS.

College Presidents just accept that others are more powerful and you need to replace the BCS with a playoff before someone does it for you.

The BCS is a private company. Why should the government have any say in what they do as long as they comply with all the regulations, etc.?

If the NCAA was a govnerment run deal, then I could see it.

Barbara Boxer, Tom Osborne, and Alabama...

Bisonfan, I guess you did not think the government should mettle in Enron, Ma Bell break up, airline regulations, etc, the list goes on an on.

Since the BCS is basically a profit making enterprise, it is more reasons to have the US Government step in and help to regulate the practice of college football.

My predictions the BE will never lose BCS membership is based on the fact that US Congress is breathing down the backs of the College Presidents and reasons for baby steps in the 5th access bowl. Most of these College Presidents report to the Governors of the states and US Congress has a big influence on spending provided to the states and the Governors are not going to go against the hand that feeds them.

A playoff is just around the corner because the BCS simply does not work, limits partipation from every division 1A school, and is not run by the NCAA.

US Congress could simple work to reverse the court decision won by Georgia and Oklahoma that help with the creation of BCS and return control back to the NCAA to regulate and manage college football the same as all the other sports.

The BCS issues would then be resolved.

Yes US Congress please step in and help to clean up the mess created by the BCS. Yesterday would not be soon enough.

Lash, dare I say Interstate Commerce Commission?

BCS practices operating in restraint of trade? :D

ooooh - when Barbara Boxer gets involved, then you just know it's BIG DOINGS !!

I am forced to ponder - what is her motivation here ?

Do you suppose Barbara is a grad of U Cal Berkeley, and the snub of the Bears has her up in arms ?

Just pondering.....

Barbara Boxer, if I remember correctly, is one of the most evil people to get elected to Congress since reconstruction. She does NOT want to do ANYthing to help football. IMHO of course! ;) ;)

I can think of 16 other seators that would gladly join her if the Big East BCS bid comes under fire.

Then again there are about 16 more out west supporting the MWC that would join in the fight as well.

BCS is on life support and everyone just does not know it yet.

Because most of the schools are funded by the states. Most feel they should have equal access to the larger payouts of the BCS.

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But teams are not equal. Isn't that the point of playing the game?

But the BCS is not cooking their books, they don't have a monopoly on college sports (NAIA), and their are no federal regulations that are part of the NCAA to be taken off.

They're doing nothing illegal. Why should they just step in and change things simply because they want to?