Post-BCS game? Playoff? Don't hold your breath despite the controversial snubbing of Southern Cal.
By Associated Press
Published December 9, 2003
The best team? Nobody will know for sure this season.
What if the winner of the Rose Bowl plays the winner of the Sugar Bowl a week later? Oklahoma vs. Southern Cal would be a dandy. So would LSU vs. USC. If Michigan slipped in with its two losses, some might be upset, though nobody could say the Wolverines went through the back door.
A one-game playoff is one solution that has floated around for many years in an attempt to crown a true champion out of one of the most controversial, some say antiquated, concoctions in sports, the bowl system.
"We have this conversation every year," Texas coach Mack Brown said. "Unless we change the system, we'll have this conversation every year."
The system that gives us No. 1 USC vs. No. 4 Michigan in the Rose Bowl and No. 2 LSU vs. No. 3 Oklahoma in the BCS title game, the Sugar Bowl, is in place for at least two more seasons.
Some tweaking is likely in order. But wholesale changes almost certainly aren't. In fact, while many vocal fans might be irate, at least one official believes the key decisionmakers, coaches, athletic directors and school presidents, probably will stick with something close to the status quo even when the current contract is up.
"The overwhelming majority want to keep the bowl system in some form," said Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association.
"Just like with the BCS, you're not going to serve every institution in every conference, even with a playoff system."
The most likely change involves adding a championship game, or maybe two rounds of playoffs, after the bowls, which has been debated often.
Oregon athletic director Bill Moos made the most serious push in 2001, after the Ducks got bypassed for the top bowl in favor of Nebraska, which had lost 62-36 to Colorado and didn't even play in the Big 12 title game.
The pros for a postbowl playoff: A tournament-style ending would leave less room for debate.
Cons: It adds an extra week of football. And would fans really pay to go to the Rose Bowl one week then take another trip for the championship game the next?
A more radical change would be taking 16 top teams and throwing them into a tournament.
Playoff proponents say it makes more sense to decide a football title the same way as almost every other championship in major sports.
But critics say a full-fledged playoff would gut the bowl system as we know it. And there always will be a debate about the third-, ninth- or 17th-ranked team.
Much of how this season will be remembered rides on Michigan. If it upsets Southern Cal, the winner of the Sugar Bowl, the only one-loss team, will be the champion in both polls.
But if Southern Cal wins, there's a good chance of a split. Coaches don't vote for the top team because their trophy goes to the winner of the BCS title game. AP voters select a No. 1 team.
Another possibility, although unlikely, would be to dismantle the BCS and revert to the old-fashioned bowl system then let poll voters determine champions.
While that solution would promote the self-interested bowl system essentially responsible for the current problems, it would eliminate the BCS, whose framers have proved during the past several years that the harder they try to come up with a perfect solution, the clearer it is that none exists.
"I really don't have any answers," Gator Bowl director Rick Catlett said. "But it certainly is a mess right now."
