It will take more than realignment to kill the BCS. It’s a hydra-headed monster of multiple power brokers, not easily dispensed with. Big money has created some cozy arrangements. and too many influential and greedy people have been fragrantly greased to stay happy with this peculiar institution of football slavery. The kids work for free, and university presidents, coaches, bowl chairmen and television networks are making a river of dirty money that flows all the way to Washington D.C. Along the way hands are brown as the Potomac itself. The BCS is as safe as a Washington lobbyist, as American as banking bailouts and downsizing, as hard to change as the unemployment rate. The BCS isn’t going away. It’s made the right friends and paid them to stay loyal. As imperfect as it is, it’s made college football the most compelling regular season in sports. The playoffs began when Oregon met LSU in Dallas in week one.
Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson is proposing a 16-team playoff. Sports fans can envision how it might work, and revel at settling a championship on the field instead of in some basement computers and by semi-secret ballot, but change is coming over Jim Delaney’s dead body.
For now, the best anyone can hope for on the playoff front is a 1 versus 4, 2 versus 3 plus-one model, and that’s the backdoor play that could create December Madness.
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