Most signs continue to point to a four-team playoff, starting with the 2014 season and replacing the Bowl Championship Series' single-championship-game format that has kicked up controversy for much of the past 14 years.
But there are differences to iron out, details to fill in. The conference commissioners who oversee the BCS gather Wednesday in Chicago and roll up their sleeves. Whether they'll emerge from the scheduled seven-hour meeting with a basic plan ? particulars to come ? is uncertain.
From what to do with the championship format (four-team playoff or a plus-one?) to selection guidelines (all conference champions or simply the top four teams?) to how to divide an expected revenue windfall of as much as $400 million a year, leagues have staked out a variety of positions.
"I'm confident," BCS executive director Bill Hancock says, "that each commissioner will say 'This is what we want, and this is also what we can live with,' And then, we'll identify the points of disagreement and work through those."
The group, which also includes Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick, meets again in Chicago on June 20, and a 12-member oversight committee of university CEOs will meet June 26 in Washington, D.C.? potentially to endorse a final plan.
National championship format
Options: A four-team playoff or a plus-one, which would let the bowl schedule play out, then identify the nation's top two teams and match them in a title game.
Issues: The modest playoff has been a focus since the commissioners came out of three days of meetings in late April, and the concept still has broad support. For a sport that has clung to the bowl system and resisted a tournament, the move would be momentous.
The Big Ten and Pacific-12 aren't ruling out a more conservative shift to a plus-one, with Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott touting it as least disruptive to the Rose Bowl and the bowl system in general. But the Southeastern and Big 12 have drawn a line in the sand; they staunchly against a plus-one.
Scott figures to negotiate.
Tricky, too, is the question of playoff game sites, specifically for the two semifinals. Sentiment is strong for staging them in bowls (and putting the championship game up for bid). But should it be those affiliated with the Nos. 1 and 2 teams and their conferences? Should they rotate annually? The Big Ten and Pac-12 will seek to largely preserve their marriage with the Rose.
Quoting: "There will be something for everybody," Hancock says, "but no one will get everything they want."
Team selection
Options: Top four teams, period, or some conference champions.
Issues: Florida President Bernie Machen said after the SEC's meetings late last month that the league wouldn't compromise on allotting playoff berths to the top four teams at the end of the regular season. The Big 12 agrees. That could accommodate two teams in a competitive league that finish high, as LSU and Alabama did in 2011.
The Pac-12's Scott, meanwhile, is bullish on recognizing league champions. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said that "we should have the four best teams" but conference titles "should matter." Delany says berths could go to the three top league champions and an at-large entry.
The ratings, themselves, are at issue. Support is growing to supplant the BCS' current mathematical rankings ? a composite of human polls and computer rankings ? with a selection committee. One way or the other, greater weight will be given to teams' strength of schedule.
Quoting: "Our ability to wind up with a solution that can be simply and easily explained to the American public is critical ? given the current perceptions of the BCS," Notre Dame's Swarbrick says. " The simpler the better."
Revenue distribution
Options: They're being studied by a subcommittee of five commissioners, including Delany, the SEC's Mike Slive and the Atlantic Coast's John Swofford, but haven't been publicly aired. According to multiple officials who spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, they're weighing an approach that would base payouts in part on participation in the playoff and in part on team finishes each season in the top 25. Schools would earn credits, or "units," for their respective leagues over a rolling, multiple-year period.
Issues: That has raised concerns about the sport's rich ? programs in, say, the powerful SEC ? growing richer and fostering competitive imbalance. Officials in the ACC already are sensitive to the SEC's recent partnership with the Big 12 in the new Champions Bowl, mirroring the Big Ten's and Pac-12's alliance in the Rose Bowl and inviting speculation that the four leagues are separating themselves from the rest of the major-college pack.
William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system and co-chairman of the watchdog Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, is pushing a commission proposal to fold the graduation rates of schools' athletes into football's revenue-sharing formula. But it has gained no traction.
The next array of TV, marketing and other contracts, expected to run 8-12 years, should at least double the $155 million annual average of the current BCS's current package of deals, which expire at the end of the 2013 season. There is strong sentiment among the key decision-makers to reward schools and conferences that have the marquee names and history of success that lifts TV viewership and, accordingly, network rights fees.
Quoting: "We all understand the participants (in a playoff) have to be rewarded," Clemson athletics director Terry Don Phillips says. "But they should not be rewarded beyond a reasonable means. We need a reasonable basis for revenue distribution among all schools. I think people understand it's about more than one or two conferences, or three or four or five. It's going to take all the schools and leagues to make this thing work."
Kirwan sounds a wider alarm.
"If we don't do this right ? we're going to have another dance here where people are going to be jumping around the country to get into a conference because they think it will get them into the financial nirvana of the BCS revenue," he says. "And the sad thing is that most of them, I think, are going to end up in a worse fiscal situation. ? Teams are going to be traveling all over the country. Students are going to be out of their classes in sports having nothing to do with football. And it's going to be a mess."
The timetable
Options: Nothing is firm, but Hancock and other officials have pointed to next week's meeting and the presidents' follow-up six days later as end points ? at least for hammering out most of the framework of the new postseason system.
Issues: The commissioners appeared unified on a four-team playoff in April. Comments in the wake of subsequent conference meetings, in which presidents and athletics directors took part, indicate a splintering of opinion on the details.
Quoting: "You'd like to have the elements of what you're doing in place so you could work on how to implement them," says Notre Dame's Swarbrick, who is hopeful of significant progress ? a decision on the format and other basics ? Wednesday. "As an example, if you made the decision to use a selection committee, then you can spend the next week on the issue of what's the composition of the committee."
At least one more high-stakes undertaking lies ahead.
"If you're going to bid out a championship game, which is a likely element of most of the models discussed, the lead time on that is significant," Swarbrick says. "Look at the lead time on bidding out a Final Four or a Super Bowl; it's four or five years. The external time pressures we face are very real, and I think we have to be conscious of it."
Source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/UsatodaycomCollegeSports-TopStories/~3/gvRxeMYY1ag/1
No comments:
Post a Comment