Sports

BCS chief: System is in schools’ best interest

admin Contributor
Font Size:

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP) — The new BCS executive director officially began his tenure Thursday by saying the often-criticized postseason represents a consensus among the 120 schools that play major college football.

Bill Hancock said a playoff at college football’s highest level would lead to more injuries, conflict with final exams, kill the bowl system and diminish the importance of the regular season.

“I know this is not completely popular, but I believe in it,” Hancock told reporters Thursday at the Football Writers Association of America awards breakfast. “I believe it is in the best interest of the universities.

“College football has never been better and I believe the BCS is part of that.”

Hancock, a longtime administrator in college athletics, was hired by the conference commissioners in November to be a full-time point person for the Bowl Championship Series. During the first 12 years of the BCS, the position of coordinator rotated among conference commissioners on a two-year basis.

Hancock now assumes those duties.

The Bowl Championship Series was implemented in 1998 to match the two top-ranked teams in major college football at the end of the season and help create matchups for the four other marquee bowl games — the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange and Rose.

No. 1 Alabama and No. 2 Texas were set to play in the BCS national championship Thursday night at the Rose Bowl.

Hancock said the fact that other lower levels of college football use playoffs to decide their champions doesn’t mean it would work in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The second-tier of Division I football, the Championship Subdivision, has a 16-team playoff with all but the final played at home sites.

“It works at that level, I can’t deny it, but if you look attendance for those games, only Montana had decent attendance,” he said. “Many teams didn’t draw as well as they did in the regular season.”

Hancock said there has been no discussion about adding a fifth bowl into the BCS mix. He said the commissioners and bowls are pleased with the double-hosting model, in which the championship game is played about a week after the other four bowls at one of those sites.

“But I suspect it will be one of the items on our list of topics,” he said.

It has been speculated that the Cotton Bowl, now played in the new $1.2 billion Dallas Cowboys Stadium, would again make a pitch to be included in the BCS.

“The fact is what we have right now works,” Hancock said. “Who would you ask not to be a part of this?”

No changes are expected to the system for the next four years, despite congressional hearings and a new pro-playoff ad campaign.

The BCS begins a new four-year TV deal with ESPN next season, and each of its current bowl partners also start new four-year contracts in the 2010 season.

The BCS is in the middle of a four-year cycle it will us to evaluate which conferences receive automatic bids. The champions of the Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, ACC and SEC currently get automatic bids to BCS games.

The BCS uses three criteria, which judge the strength of the teams in the conferences from top to bottom, to determine which leagues receive automatic bids.

Hancock said the number of automatic bids could go up for the 2012 season if another conferences qualifies under the BCS standards.

The Mountain West Conference doesn’t have an automatic bid but has had its champion earn a BCS berth three times since the 2004 season, including this season with TCU. The Western Athletic Conference also has had three teams, including Boise State twice, reach the BCS.

But both leagues would like to secure automatic bids and some BCS critics have questioned whether the process for earning an automatic bid is truly objective.

Hancock said the BCS has talked about making that process more transparent.

“I think there is some sense now that it is time to be a little bit more open about that,” he said. “It’s all objective, based on the data.”

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel