BCS A Cartel? - Tulane President Says BCS Is A Cartel - ESPN

July 22, 2003 - ESPN.com

Non-BCS schools to work for postseason access
ESPN - Associated Press

The major college football schools left outside the Bowl Championship Series united Tuesday in an effort to get access to the lucrative postseason and reduce the requirements to belong in Division I-A.

Tulane president Scott Cowen convened a teleconference of 44 presidents from non-BCS schools and created a Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform. The goals of the coalition are to improve access for all teams to postseason football, reduce the financial requirements for remaining in Division I-A and raise academic requirements in college athletics.

The presidents accepted an invitation to meet with representatives of the BCS on Sept. 8 in Chicago but said they were prepared to press the issue even further.

"We believe that the Bowl Championship Series is anticompetitive and has characteristics of a cartel," Cowen said.

"Tulane met last year with antitrust lawyers. I don't think it's productive for higher education and universities to sue each other. But with such an important issue, we can't rule out any options now."

Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg, whose conference is part of the BCS, said the system does not violate antitrust violations.

The two major issues are the new Division I-A requirements, which go into effect in August 2004, and the postseason. The major conferences ruled out an NFL-style playoff system on Monday.

Cowen said it was not "appropriate" to rule out any options before the meeting and pushed for a playoff system that would include all of Division I-A. The BCS includes the champions of the Pac-10, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East, who all get automatic bids, plus two at-large teams.

The goal of the system is to pit the top two teams in a championship game. Notre Dame, an independent, is the only school outside those six conferences to play in a BCS bowl in the first five years of the system.

"We simply want access like we have in all other sports," Cowen said. "We want a level playing field. There's not a level playing field in college football. We're not looking for some handout. We're looking for access."

Teams from non-BCS conferences are guaranteed a bid to one of the four major bowl games only if they are ranked in the top six. In 1998, Tulane went undefeated but could only play in the Liberty Bowl because it was ranked 11th in the BCS standings.

But in the 20 years before the BCS started, only one school other than Notre Dame that is not currently in those six conferences played in one of the series' four bowls.

The BCS has paid out more than $80 million to the major conferences each year, compared with about $8 million to the schools from the other five conferences.

"Let's not ask about them giving money to us," said Bill Greiner, the president of Buffalo. "They want to drive people out of competition at the Division I-A level unless we come up to some standard they decide to set in terms of expenditures and attendance. That is plain flat-out wrong."

The increased requirements for Division I-A will require schools to sponsor 16 varsity teams instead of 14; to average 15,000 paid attendance per game; and to give at least 200 total athletic scholarships or pay $4 million in scholarships.

Weiberg said the BCS shouldn't be blamed for the changes.

"The I-A membership requirements were voted on by the NCAA membership," Weiberg said. "They were not designed by the Bowl Championship Series schools. An NCAA subcommittee created these standards."

BCS Busters Website - BCSBusters.com

I just found this website called BCSBusters, and you can see it with a click on the title of this post. Here's what it's about:

BCSBusters.com was created to raise national awareness of the BCS' shortcomings, as well as to demand a playoff system be put in place to determine the national champion. The web site hosts an open forum for fans to collaborate and form a playoff system that everyone can agree with. With your interest and participation, we can change the entire post season!

Lloyd Carr: There Are Flaws In The (BCS) System

Michigan coach disappointed in BCS title-game snub

Posted: Monday December 4, 2006 12:30AM; Updated: Monday December 4, 2006 12:30AM

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) -- Lloyd Carr is going to let people read between the lines.

Sunday night, the Michigan coach wouldn't directly say that his Wolverines should be headed to the BCS national championship game. But he wasn't making it hard to guess how he felt.

"I don't think there is any question that there are flaws in the system," Carr said on a Rose Bowl teleconference. "I hope that, in the future, we can have a system where all of the answers are decided on the field."

Michigan entered the weekend ranked No. 3 and helpless to do anything but watch, having finished its regular season with a 42-39 loss to top-ranked Ohio State on Nov. 18.

The Wolverines got what they appeared to need when No. 2 USC lost to UCLA, but, as it turned out, that wasn't enough to get Michigan a rematch with its archrival. Instead, the team will be facing USC in Pasadena, Calif., while Ohio State plays Florida, which jumped from fourth to second after beating Arkansas in the SEC title game.

"My statement is that I don't think they would have moved ahead of us if USC had won their game," Carr said of the Gators. "I don't know what the voters were thinking -- you'd have to ask them -- but I don't think there's any question that if USC wins, we remain No. 3."

Ohio State coach Jim Tressel chose to abstain in this weekend's coaches poll instead of helping decide which team he would face in the title game. It was a move that Carr would only touch on briefly.

"I thought it was real slick," said Carr, who also said he could not see any situation where he would give up his vote.

Carr was careful to say all the right things about Michigan's third trip to the Rose Bowl in the last four years.

"The Rose Bowl is not a consolation -- it is the greatest tradition in college football," he said. "I've always felt that there's no better experience for a college football player than to play in the Rose Bowl."

Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis said he voted Michigan No. 2 on his ballot.

"I didn't play Florida. I played Michigan, I played them at home and they beat us soundly. I thought from my end it was a fairly easy decision," Weis said.

Carr said that a traditional Big Ten vs. Pac-10 matchup in the Rose Bowl is even more appropriate this year after the Nov. 17 death of his mentor, Bo Schembechler.

"Coach John Robinson spoke at coach Schembechler's memorial, and he talked about the tradition of USC and Michigan," Carr said. "We have great respect for USC, for the Rose Bowl and for that tradition."

The Wolverines will be looking for their first postseason victory since beating Florida 38-30 in the Outback Bowl on Jan. 1, 2003. Michigan lost to USC and Texas in the next two Rose Bowls before dropping a 32-28 decision to Nebraska in last season's Alamo Bowl.

"We'd like to win one of these," Carr said. "We've done some great things to get to the Rose Bowl, but now we need to win one."

They'll be facing a USC team that was hoping for a fourth-straight shot at a national title and a coach who understands Carr's frustration. The Trojans won the 2003 AP national title despite being left out of the BCS championship game.

"I completely understand what coach Carr is having to deal with under the BCS system and the challenge he faces," USC coach Pete Carroll said. "I respect him for the way he is handling it."

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

BCS Dumb Obsession With Finding #2 - Slate

Who's #2?The BCS' dumb obsession with finding America's second-best college football team.
By Chris Suellentrop - Slate

Updated Monday, Dec. 4, 2006, at 6:49 PM ET

The annual outrage over college football's Bowl Championship Series shows that sports journalists are even more attached to preconceived narratives than political pundits are. When the BCS gets something right, as it did by pairing Florida against Ohio State in this year's national championship game, everyone still recites the talismanic phrase: "The BCS doesn't work."

Of course, it's true that the BCS doesn't work. It discriminates against teams that don't hail from the six major conferences. It's biased in favor of teams that were highly ranked based only on preseason expectations. And it has ruined the traditional bowl season by, for example, sending the Big 12 champion to the Fiesta Bowl rather than to the Orange Bowl.

But this year's debate over the merits of the BCS has exposed a more basic flaw, the faulty premise that underlies the entire system. The BCS was created in 1998 with the stated goal of pitting the nation's top two football teams against each other in a championship game. Michigan partisans, then, are outraged that their team isn't getting another chance to take on Ohio State. The Wolverines are the second-best team in the country, they say. Shouldn't that guarantee them a spot in the title game?

No. The fact that the Wolverines are probably the second-best team in the country doesn't mean they've earned the right to play in the national championship game. In fact, it means the exact opposite: Michigan's No. 2 status is why they shouldn't be playing for the title.

Playoff systems are designed to determine, in a fair manner, which is the single best team in a particular sport. Their purpose is not to pit the two finest teams against each other in a season-ending game. The Yankees and Red Sox do not play annually in the World Series. The Indianapolis Colts will never be given a chance to play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. When the two best college basketball teams in the country face off, as they routinely do, in a Final Four semifinal or even in the round of eight, does anyone think that the loser deserves a rematch?

Take this example: Does anyone think the Seattle Seahawks were the No. 2 team in the NFL last year? No. Likewise, will anyone think the NFC champion who makes it to this year's Super Bowl is the second-best team in football? Of course not. Will the best team in the NFL still win the Super Bowl? Yes. Even if it's an NFC team!

Unlike TV commentators and sports columnists, the college-football voters understand, at least implicitly, that the season-long playoff that is the college football season should determine the single best team, not the best two teams. That's why the voters in the Harris poll and coaches' poll have consistently voted against a Michigan-Ohio State rematch. The voters cast their ballots for "not-Michigan" when they voted for USC, and they've cast their ballots for "not-Michigan" by voting for Florida.

Do we know if Florida is the second-best team in the country? Of course not. Here's what we do know: Michigan is not the best. How do we know that? By the traditional criterion: They scored fewer points in a football game than Ohio State did. The only team that has the "right" to play in the BCS championship game is the best team, Ohio State. And the only teams that should be scratched without question are teams that have already been determined to be "not the best," like Michigan.
On Sunday, Michigan coach Lloyd Carr had the gall to declare, "I hope that, in the future, we can have a system where all of the answers are decided on the field" and, "We need to get away from anything that's not decided by the players themselves." I'm fairly certain that Carr's players were involved in Michigan's 42-39 defeat at the hands of Ohio State and that it was played on a field. (If not, sports journalists have a real scandal on their hands.)

"Divining the difference between 11-1 Michigan and 12-1 Florida is truly an impossible task," wrote ESPN.com's Pat Forde. Fair enough, but there's no need to divine the difference between Michigan and Florida. The gridiron has already divined the relevant question: the difference between Michigan and Ohio State.

Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany Supports BCS System

Delany: BCS system works

Big Ten commissioner supports set-up, but feels bad for Michigan
Wednesday, December 06, 2006

BY JOHN HEUSER
News Sports Reporter

Two days after the University of Michigan football team was dumped from national title game contention in favor of Florida, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany voiced support for the Bowl Championship Series system, but also expressed regret for the Wolverines' plight.

"We had a great football season, and we had some great football teams,'' he said Tuesday. "Personally I was disappointed that Michigan did not have an opportunity to play for the national championship.

"We have a system, and the system worked out. I've seen other disappointed teams from other conferences. This is not the first time it's happened.''

The frustration is still fresh for the Wolverines, however, who entered the final weekend of the season ranked third by the BCS. When No. 2 Southern California lost to UCLA, Michigan held out hope for a title game invitation to play No. 1 Ohio State. Instead, the berth went to Florida, which jumped ahead of Michigan in the standings after winning the Southeastern Conference championship.

Delany admitted that things might have been different if the Big Ten had played games the past two weeks. In keeping with Big Ten tradition, league action ended Nov. 18, the weekend before Thanksgiving.

"Typically, if everyone's playing and winning, the status quo (in the rankings) holds,'' he said.

Delany said he expected the end-of-play date to be discussed in the off-season, but he didn't sound sure that any action would be taken. Michigan coach Lloyd Carr has been an advocate of the current system because it allows players to spend Thanksgiving with their families and provides more study time at the end of the semester.

The commissioner made his comments at the end of a teleconference to announce Mark Silverman as president of the fledgling Big Ten Network. The network, which will televise classic and current league sports as well as original conference-affiliated programming, is scheduled to launch next August.

John Heuser can be reached at jheuser@annarbornews.com or 734-994-6816.

Bowl Championship Series - Time For Another Congressional Hearing On The BCS

This happened last fall; I think it's time for another Congressional hearing on the BCS. There's a mistake each year and someone's always left out. A playoff system should be litterally forced on the NCAA.

Congress to look into 'deeply flawed' BCS system - Dec 2005
Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Calling the Bowl Championship Series "deeply flawed," the chairman of a congressional committee has called a hearing on the controversial system used to determine college football's national champion.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, charged with regulating America's sports industry, announced Friday it will conduct a hearing on the BCS next week, after this season's bowl matchups are determined.

"College football is not just an exhilarating sport, but a billion-dollar business that Congress cannot ignore," said committee Chairman Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. Barton's panel is separate from the House Government Reform panel that tackled steroids in baseball.

The committee announcement called the hearing, scheduled for next Wednesday, a "comprehensive review" of the BCS and postseason college football.

"Too often college football ends in sniping and controversy, rather than winners and losers," Barton said. "The current system of determining who's No. 1 appears deeply flawed."

Barton said he does not have legislation in mind to force a change, but said he hopes congressional hearings will spur discussion and improvements. It won't be the first time Congress has looked at the BCS. In 2003, the Senate probed whether the system was unfairly tilted against smaller schools.

NCAA Division I-A football does not have a playoff. The Bowl Championship Series was established in 1998 to determine a national champion using the traditional bowl system and a mix of computer and human polls to set up a championship game.

Because of the controversy surrounding the bowl selection process last season, The Associated Press told BCS officials to stop using its writers polls in its formula.

The committee invited testimony from Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg, the current chairman of the BCS.

"If members of the subcommittee have ideas on how the college football postseason can be improved, we welcome that input," Weiberg said.

"The current structure is designed to match the No. 1 and 2 ranked teams, identified through a ranking system, in a bowl game. It is an extension of the bowl system and a method to determine a national champion through the bowls," Weiberg said. "It has paired teams in bowl games that would not have been possible under the bowl arrangements existing before its creation."

Along with the acclaim of a national champion, the BCS also created a financial windfall with tens of millions of dollars at stake for teams and conferences who participate.

But it has seldom been without controversy.

For example, Southeastern Conference champion Auburn was undefeated in 2004 but was shut out of the BCS title game, which matched USC against Oklahoma. Utah also finished the season undefeated but could not play for the title.

The Jan. 4 Rose Bowl is the site of this year's BCS championship game. Other games with BCS ties are the Orange, Sugar and Fiesta bowls, with a rotating schedule for hosting the championship matchup.