http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/columns/story?columnist=maisel_ivan&id=1818961 Fifth game to help non-BCS schools By Ivan Maisel ESPN.com The Division I-A commissioners found consensus in the most financially viable plan Wednesday and agreed to use the "piggyback" as the working model for the next BCS contract, according to officials at two I-A conferences. Each of the four current BCS bowls would host a second game in the year in which it hosts the national championship game, beginning with the 2006 season. Although commissioners were asked not to comment before a Thursday teleconference, the decision must have been made, if only because the commissioners and their representatives have begun to refer to piggybacking with the more refined term, "double-hosting." Incoming BCS chair Kevin Weiberg, the Big 12 commissioner, and Oregon president David Frohnmayer, will announce the decision. In this working model, the four bowls -- Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange -- will stage their bowls around Jan. 1 and one of them will host the national championship the following week. The additional game is necessary to accommodate a qualified champion from a I-A conference not in the current BCS. I-A presidents from BCS and non-BCS schools agreed in February to increase access to the games by adding a fifth bowl. The I-A presidents left one caveat, that the fifth bowl must be financially viable. That won't be decided until the BCS opens negotiations with its current television partner, ABC Sports, in the fall. However, early discussions indicated the piggyback was more financially sound than adding a fifth bowl organization to the BCS. The four BCS bowls, each of which hosts the national championship game every four years, objected to the financial implications of having that game every five years. Twelve bowls, most prominently the Capital One, the Gator, the Cotton and the Holiday, had applied to host the fifth game. The addition of a fifth game for increased access was approved by university presidents without regard to the financial implications. The Rose Bowl, scared of its ability to sell 93,000 tickets if a non-BCS school qualified for its game, balked at hosting such a school. The Big 12 and SEC balked at the idea of having to play such schools more often than did teams from the Big Ten and Pacific-10 Conferences. There had been discussions of quelling the Rose Bowl's concerns through ticket guarantees, but enough of a consensus was reached that the "piggyback" won support.
Honestly, I had never thought of the ticket salets and etc stuff before reading this article. How many people can a Southern Miss or Boise State bring to the Rose Bowl? And would, lets say, Oklahoma be excited to play Boise State in the second Rose Bowl game?
Some BCS schools don't travel all that well as it is. It just seems to me this is a weird way to attempt to "fix" the problem. I would prefer they just get rid of automatic bids altogether. If a team can't be ranked high enough to get into a BCS Bowl, then they shouldn't be there. These guaranteed bids aren't about football. They're about money and money alone.
We talked about this on the radio show and as I told our listeners, This is proof that a playoff is only way to determine a champion. If they can do it at 1-AAA and 1-AA football, why not 1-A ? Use the bowl sites, 8 or 16 start the tournament via some sort and let the best team standing take home the trophy.
What happens if BCS #1 Michigan meets #2 USC in RoseBowl 1? Do they play again for the BCS championship in RoseBowl 2?
This is all pretty weird. I wish they could just cut all the BS and have a 16 team playoff like I-AA. The TV ratings for all the games would be through the roof.
I assume BCS #1 and BCS #2 wouldn't play until the later National Championship Bowl. The additional teams to make up the first round would be one Non-BCS school getting an autromatic bid, and I assume there would be an added at-large slot, as well. So instead of eight teams in the BCS bowls, there would be ten.
My understanding is this: You have the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta bowls around January 1-4. In choosing the teams involved, he first thing you get is the BCS 1 & 2 teams are excluded from the pool (more on them in a bit). Each bowl then has a pool that starts with BCS#3 and that includes any remaining conference champs with an automatic bid. It also includes as many as 4 at-large selections. Those 4 games go on between 8 teams. Then a week or so later one of the 4 bowls above hosts the National Championship game between #1 and #2. I would suspect it will be called the "BCS National Championship Game" and not "The Rose Bowl 2". Basically what they are doing is adding a 5th game without adding another host bowl. The 4 current hosts did not want to wait 5 years before cashing in big with a championship game. This way they get it every four years and also get the revenue from 2 games every fourth year. The schools get what they want in basically adding 2 more at-large positions (a total of 4), within those 5 games. You will still have the 6 automatic bids for Conference champs but chances are 2 of those will be in the big game. That leaves 4 conference champs and 4 at-large teams to fill the for bowl games. Adding at-large spots seemingly makes it more likely that a smaller conference could get a team in the BCS.
I don't know why the mid-major conferences would abandon their anti-trust efforts against the BCS with this "solution". Without a guarantee of a bid to a non-BCS team, we're just going to see severa more years of no non-BCS teams making it to a BCS bowl. While adding two more at-large bids would make it slightly easier to get in, it doesn't solve the inherent problems (especially since the weak, weak, weak Big East will still get an automatic bid). Apply this formula to last season, would a non-BCS team have gotten in to this 5th bowl had it existed? Probably not. We'd have probably seen Texas and Tennessee take up the spots if there were two more at large bids.
