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New BCS Playoff Proposal: Much Ado About Nothing

Posted by srr50 on April 22nd, 2009 under Football

Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson made his case yesterday for a BCS playoff system at the annual BCS Commissioners Spring Meeting. Thompson basically wants a “Mini March Madness,” where a selection committee picks 8 teams for a playoff using the four major bowls.

The concept has as much chance of getting a serious look from the BCS commissioners as there is of Augie Garrido hiring Huck as his hitting instructor.

The BCS will begin a new $500 million deal with ESPN in 2011. THE WWL negotiated the deal with the understanding that everything would remain as is.

Proponents of a playoff system continue to point to the short-sightedness of leaving lots of cash on the table, since CBS is shelling out $6 Billion for the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

March Madness does inject $545 Million into college basketball each year. ESPN will pay out $125 Million yearly begining in 2011 for the BCS contests.

But the problem for the Big Six BCS Conferences, (ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10, SEC) is that the NCAA owns March Madness lock, stock and basketball. The NCAA funds its operations out of that money (to the tune of 96% of its entire budget), and it also oversees the cutting of the financial pie into enough pieces to mollify all D-1 conferences.

The Big Six would love to have a playoff — if they could figure out a way to keep the payout to all the other conferences down, and if they could keep the NCAA out of it.

For instance, from 2002-2007 the SEC picked up an average of $11.5 Million from the basketball tournament. The Conference pulled in an average of $17.8 Million from the BCS Bowls per year, and that doesn’t count money generated from non-BCS Bowl games. That number is basically true for the other power conferences as well.

This past season, the Big Six BCS Conference championship teams automatically qualified for a BCS bowl and its $18 Million payout. Utah was the lone non-BCS qualifier and collected its big paycheck for thumping Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.


Poinsettia Bowl teams Boise State and TCU were both ranked higher than the two teams in the Orange Bowl last year.

WAC champ Boise State, ranked 9th in the BCS rankings, played 11th-rated TCU in the Poinsettia Bowl. The two teams each got $750,000 for playing. Both teams were ranked higher in the BCS standings than either Virginia Tech or Cincinnati, the two Orange Bowl participants, who collected their $18 Million for driving people away from the TV sets.

Keeping the NCAA — and other non-BCS schools — out of the potential pot of gold is the real holdup to a playoff. Right now the Big Six BCS Conferences get to decide who gets how much money, and they don’t don’t have to deal with the NCAA.

They seem to like that just fine.

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9 Responses

  1. Levander Williams said:

    April 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    Huh. I guess that answers my evergreen ‘but wouldn’t they make more money with a playoff?’ question. The ‘they’ are what matters.

    How is it that the NCAA has such a strong hold on the basketball tourney (and $), but the conferences control access in D-1 football?

  2. srr50 said:

    April 22nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    How is it that the NCAA has such a strong hold on the basketball tourney (and $), but the conferences control access in D-1 football?

    Because the NCAA basketball tournament was a “loss leader,” simply another championship event run by the NCAA for student-athletes like golf, tennis or swimming.

    Then Magic Johnson and Larry Bird opened the door for it to be a money-maker.

    The NCAA only “sanctions” D-1 football bowl games. Since the bowl games sprang out of cities looking for some holiday tourism, there was no initial desire to use it as a playoff system, only pull to get some fans to follow their teams for a few days to a holiday destination.

  3. sharbone n bubba n billyboo said:

    April 22nd, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Why do you guys talk in code so much? I have a difficult enough time trying to figure out what these articles are all about let alone trying to figure out your comments. Ridiculous.Esp for newcomers.

  4. cw said:

    April 22nd, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    this is the best explanation of “why don’t we have a playoff” i’ve ever read.

    well done, sir.

  5. Ecurbmanchild said:

    April 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 pm

    No playoff in the near future, and probably not in the distant future either. As long as that Wank at Ohio State is in charge and the a-hole running the Big 12 is also opposed to a playoff. WTF is he doing in charge of Big 12 football, anyway?

  6. scagnetti said:

    April 23rd, 2009 at 1:50 am

    I concur, CW.

  7. J.R.69 said:

    April 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 am

    You…you mean it’s not because an extra game would interfere with the players’ academics???

    I…I’m so disillusioned!!

  8. Levander Williams said:

    April 23rd, 2009 at 7:05 am

    Well, crap.

    So I guess no one wants to fight the NCAA over control of the smaller division playoffs because there is no real money involved, and it’s too late for the NCAA to assert control over the D-1 football conferences.

    What’s to stop NCAA from ‘taking it by force’? Do the conferences currently operate with that much autonomy?

  9. California Horn said:

    April 23rd, 2009 at 12:21 pm

    Great work, srr.

    One minor nit: isn’t all the bowl revenue shared equally (after subtracting travel costs) throughout a conference? The article makes it sound like the bowl participants themselves have been pocketing the bowl payouts, but I think that’s only true for an independent team like Notre Dame.

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