Look what they've done now.
College football hype is about to ramp up this week with the ACC preseason media days kicking off in Greensboro, Ga., on Sunday. Finally, after a long, drawn-out offseason, it should be about football.
Think again.
Blame it on the Bowl Championship Series, which in its clumsiness and/or lack of foresight, has brought unparalleled heat upon itself. The BCS presidential oversight committee has scheduled a Monday conference call where it is expected to announce a meeting with their non-BCS peers.
The call was hastily announced Friday, seemingly as a preemptive strike against Tulane president Scott Cowen. Cowen is playing host to a conference call of his own to discuss the BCS structure with 44 other non-BCS CEOs.
All this after a couple of congressmen Friday promised hearings regarding the BCS and possible antitrust violations.
Understand that until this summer, non-BCS schools were treated like street people in the BCS culture. Confusion now reigns. The ACC's oafish expansion effort proved the BCS could eat its own. Until further notice the Big East is now no better than the Mountain West, MAC or any other mid-major you can name. The BCS turned five years old this summer showing it just needed time -- time to show how unwieldy, unorganized and out-of-control it has become. The lawyers are beginning to smell blood. The presidents are shifting uncomfortably in their big leather chairs and want to know, Mr. Commissioner, what is up.
It all cries out for some kind of leadership in college football. There is none, of course, just a bunch of fiefdoms each scrambling for a share of television and bowl money. Consider that the BCS fathers supposedly have money set aside (about $400,000) to establish a BCS office. A good starting place, you would think, for an undertaking like this.
No such luck. Five years later, the BCS still exists in midair, united by conference calls and meetings at luxury resorts. The commissioners haven't so much as appointed a full-time media representative who could at least answer questions about the confusing BCS codicils.
We want to talk about football while we're here. Some of the ACC's best players will sit down with the media Sunday, followed by the coaches on Monday. But the proceedings will be dominated by commissioner John Swofford's press conference Tuesday morning.
Can't think of enough things to ask Swofford, like:
Does the ACC intend to pursue a 12th team (perhaps further fracturing some other conference)?
Divisions or one, big ol' league in 2004?
Is it true, as has been rumored, that the Miami-Virginia Tech thing was a last-minute compromise after you took two months upsetting college athletics nationwide?
What's next, John. Kuwait?
Swofford owes the assembled media more than the usual soft-shoe routine Tuesday. In the space of a couple of months, Mike Tranghese went from a powerful, respected, well-reasoned BCS chairman to a football pauper trying to keep his league afloat. Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg basically is taking over as chairman a year early while the Big East's BCS fate is decided.
So what is the BCS agenda at this point as the walls close in? It's more than just arranging that always-on-the-edge-of-disaster No. 1 vs. No. 2 game. It's survival. The commissioners want to keep the postseason out of the hands of the NCAA. But if they're not careful, control will be wrested away.
Someday, someone is going to take a serious antitrust shot at the BCS. Hell, that's how the system came to be when the old WAC presidents threatened legal action on Capital Hill seven years ago.
It's also grandstanding. Tulane's Cowen has spent the better part of two months slamming the BCS while his athletic department was mired in a $7 million deficit. The school almost dropped football this summer.
If nothing else, the BCS has given a face to his school's financial woes. Cowen found a convenient scapegoat in the BCS for his athletic department's problem. The BCS boys are right about this one: The have-nots would still have financial difficulty with or without the BCS. Where was Cowen when Tulane went 12-0 five years ago and didn't get in a BCS bowl?
This from a school whose most prominent athletic achievement is bringing back men's basketball after a horrible gambling scandal in the 1980s. Who would Cowen have blamed the scandal on, Jimmy the Greek?
A better question: Is inclusion into the BCS going to wipe out a $7 million deficit? No.
Ah, but the BCS commissioners feel the heat because there is no core to their system. The BCS revolves around an ideal -- to clean up the football postseason while making it more profitable.
In the short term, they've accomplished both tasks. But there are too many flaws to their ideal. This is the first year, for example, that the BCS formula hasn't been tinkered with. An imperfect system has, at times, produced imperfect results. Tranghese deserves credit for earlier this year saying, "Let's just leave it alone for a while."
Too bad football continues to be overshadowed. The ACC preseason kickoff is traditionally the first, offering an early snack of information after a long offseason. Instead, the BCS wants to make sure it is on record Monday as extending an olive branch to the sport's former street people. They dropped large hints at their April meeting that the have-nots will have a permanent spot in the system.
That, it seems, would stop any antitrust discussion. But if the system is going to survive, it must clean up its office. The BCS' biggest broom is also its biggest watchdog. The presidents have made it clear, again, that they don't want a playoff. Don't expect anything like that until at least 2010.
Yup, we're going to have to live with this mess for a while longer. The networks are happy. The BCS schools are happy. Soon, even the non-BCS schools will be happy, if not totally satisfied.
It's a wacky system and at times it sucks but it’s their system and they aren't giving it up. All we ask is that they leave us a little time to talk about football here before things break up on Tuesday afternoon.
http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/story/6488290
College football hype is about to ramp up this week with the ACC preseason media days kicking off in Greensboro, Ga., on Sunday. Finally, after a long, drawn-out offseason, it should be about football.
Think again.
Blame it on the Bowl Championship Series, which in its clumsiness and/or lack of foresight, has brought unparalleled heat upon itself. The BCS presidential oversight committee has scheduled a Monday conference call where it is expected to announce a meeting with their non-BCS peers.
The call was hastily announced Friday, seemingly as a preemptive strike against Tulane president Scott Cowen. Cowen is playing host to a conference call of his own to discuss the BCS structure with 44 other non-BCS CEOs.
All this after a couple of congressmen Friday promised hearings regarding the BCS and possible antitrust violations.
Understand that until this summer, non-BCS schools were treated like street people in the BCS culture. Confusion now reigns. The ACC's oafish expansion effort proved the BCS could eat its own. Until further notice the Big East is now no better than the Mountain West, MAC or any other mid-major you can name. The BCS turned five years old this summer showing it just needed time -- time to show how unwieldy, unorganized and out-of-control it has become. The lawyers are beginning to smell blood. The presidents are shifting uncomfortably in their big leather chairs and want to know, Mr. Commissioner, what is up.
It all cries out for some kind of leadership in college football. There is none, of course, just a bunch of fiefdoms each scrambling for a share of television and bowl money. Consider that the BCS fathers supposedly have money set aside (about $400,000) to establish a BCS office. A good starting place, you would think, for an undertaking like this.
No such luck. Five years later, the BCS still exists in midair, united by conference calls and meetings at luxury resorts. The commissioners haven't so much as appointed a full-time media representative who could at least answer questions about the confusing BCS codicils.
We want to talk about football while we're here. Some of the ACC's best players will sit down with the media Sunday, followed by the coaches on Monday. But the proceedings will be dominated by commissioner John Swofford's press conference Tuesday morning.
Can't think of enough things to ask Swofford, like:
Does the ACC intend to pursue a 12th team (perhaps further fracturing some other conference)?
Divisions or one, big ol' league in 2004?
Is it true, as has been rumored, that the Miami-Virginia Tech thing was a last-minute compromise after you took two months upsetting college athletics nationwide?
What's next, John. Kuwait?
Swofford owes the assembled media more than the usual soft-shoe routine Tuesday. In the space of a couple of months, Mike Tranghese went from a powerful, respected, well-reasoned BCS chairman to a football pauper trying to keep his league afloat. Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg basically is taking over as chairman a year early while the Big East's BCS fate is decided.
So what is the BCS agenda at this point as the walls close in? It's more than just arranging that always-on-the-edge-of-disaster No. 1 vs. No. 2 game. It's survival. The commissioners want to keep the postseason out of the hands of the NCAA. But if they're not careful, control will be wrested away.
Someday, someone is going to take a serious antitrust shot at the BCS. Hell, that's how the system came to be when the old WAC presidents threatened legal action on Capital Hill seven years ago.
It's also grandstanding. Tulane's Cowen has spent the better part of two months slamming the BCS while his athletic department was mired in a $7 million deficit. The school almost dropped football this summer.
If nothing else, the BCS has given a face to his school's financial woes. Cowen found a convenient scapegoat in the BCS for his athletic department's problem. The BCS boys are right about this one: The have-nots would still have financial difficulty with or without the BCS. Where was Cowen when Tulane went 12-0 five years ago and didn't get in a BCS bowl?
This from a school whose most prominent athletic achievement is bringing back men's basketball after a horrible gambling scandal in the 1980s. Who would Cowen have blamed the scandal on, Jimmy the Greek?
A better question: Is inclusion into the BCS going to wipe out a $7 million deficit? No.
Ah, but the BCS commissioners feel the heat because there is no core to their system. The BCS revolves around an ideal -- to clean up the football postseason while making it more profitable.
In the short term, they've accomplished both tasks. But there are too many flaws to their ideal. This is the first year, for example, that the BCS formula hasn't been tinkered with. An imperfect system has, at times, produced imperfect results. Tranghese deserves credit for earlier this year saying, "Let's just leave it alone for a while."
Too bad football continues to be overshadowed. The ACC preseason kickoff is traditionally the first, offering an early snack of information after a long offseason. Instead, the BCS wants to make sure it is on record Monday as extending an olive branch to the sport's former street people. They dropped large hints at their April meeting that the have-nots will have a permanent spot in the system.
That, it seems, would stop any antitrust discussion. But if the system is going to survive, it must clean up its office. The BCS' biggest broom is also its biggest watchdog. The presidents have made it clear, again, that they don't want a playoff. Don't expect anything like that until at least 2010.
Yup, we're going to have to live with this mess for a while longer. The networks are happy. The BCS schools are happy. Soon, even the non-BCS schools will be happy, if not totally satisfied.
It's a wacky system and at times it sucks but it’s their system and they aren't giving it up. All we ask is that they leave us a little time to talk about football here before things break up on Tuesday afternoon.
http://www.sportsline.com/collegefootball/story/6488290
