BCS Shoots Down Playoff Proposal

Yeah, Utah went undefeated last season.

And yeah, the Utes stomped Alabama of the oh-so-mighty SEC in the Sugar Bowl.

But you know what? According to folks behind the BCS, Utah still isn’t good enough—not good enough to join the BCS party, at least.

That's the gist of the ruling handed down yesterday by the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, which declared (again) that the current system is just fine the way it is, completely fair and honest, and, ultimately, the best way for its six member conferences (and Notre Dame) to hog all the money and leave everyone else out in the cold. OK, I added that last part.

The ruling came down after the Mountain West Conference—home to Utah, as well as BCS-worthy teams such as BYU and TCU—forwarded a plan to level the BCS playing field by opening up the system (finally) to conferences such as, oh, for example, the MWC. Under the MWC plan, the current bowl-based BCS model would be replaced by an eight-team playoff. And that playoff would be open to teams like Utah, which are essentially blocked out of the championship race under the current format.

Granted, the MWC plan has its flaws. For one, there is no actual business model behind it. Second, it would almost certainly destroy the bowls, which is something that nobody with a brain can actually want. Then there’s the fact that (and I’ve said this before) college football probably shouldn’t have a “playoff” anyway. Not with nearly 120 teams. Not with the tradition of the bowls at stake. Call me crazy, but I think the current BCS system can work—provided that it’s opened up to MWC and other deserving conferences.

So, no, I wouldn’t have voted for the MWC plan.

But I also wouldn’t have publicly belittled it. That’s what the BCS powers-that-be did, though. They’re public relations geniuses, those guys.

Presidential Oversight Committee Chairman David Frohnmayer told USA Today that “it would make no sense” for the BCS to change its format in light of the new (and very lucrative) contract it just signed with ESPN (but no, this isn’t about money). He said it would be “ridiculous” to turn the Rose Bowl into a quarterfinal playoff game, as the MWC plan would. He said that BCS officials “had already considered almost every single aspect of this proposal in the past.”

And finally, he said that politicians—some of whom have expressed an interest in using their power to force the BCS to change—should stay out of the college football business, or risk public backlash. Hey, if anyone knows anything about public backlash, it’s a BCS official.

“Tinkering legislatively with a football playoff system as a national priority is a huge waste of my taxpayer dollars,” Frohnmayer told USA Today. “I think taxpayers would look at it in real anger.”

Yep, Dave, they probably would. But you know what?

That’s also how they look at the BCS.

Photo: Utah went undefeated and uncrowned in 2008. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)