Colleges

Meet Jerry Palm, Voice of the BCS

By Times staff
Published October 15, 2007

Jerry Palm has built a career out of tracking and commenting on the BCS and the Ratings Percentage Index, which is used in selecting the field for the NCAA basketball tournament. He may be the most quoted person in the country about the BCS even though he has no official ties to it.

Palm, his wife and four children, live in northwest Indiana near Chicago. A former band member with a computer science degree from Purdue, he started tracking the RPI in 1994 and the BCS in 1999. He has become a go-to source for newspapers, radio and television stations seeking comment on the BCS standings. As the season winds down, he may do as many as 40 newspaper interviews.

He does some computer consulting, but his primary income comes from collegebcs.com and collegerpi.com, charging for his reports and insights into the rankings. He told USA Today in 2005 that it takes him eight hours a week to figure out the BCS standings.

"I am a frequent guest on sports talk radio during college football and basketball seasons," he wrote on palmreadings.blogspot.com. "In fact, I would like to have my own show someday, but I almost never listen to sports talk radio. I almost never watch SportsCenter either. I don't have the patience to watch a 90-minute show that shouldn't take more than 45."

So where does he come down on bowl vs. playoff?

"I believe bowls and playoffs are mutually exclusive," he told USA Today. "The Purdue fan in me likes the bowl system so that my team gets a nice reward for a good year. ... On the other hand, a real playoff (minimum eight teams, 16 would be better, and forget that plus-one nonsense) would give all the contenders a chance at the national championship. If the football pooh-bahs ever do decide to create a playoff, I just hope they do a proper job of it."

[Last modified October 14, 2007, 23:03:35]