BCS Threatens To Go Back To The Old System

(Photo by Donald Miralle/Getty Images)

Q: Long-term, do you think it’s a good idea to put the entirety of the BCS in the hands of ESPN, which already wields a great deal of power in college football to begin with? I go back to 2001, when ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit was announcing on the air that he would call coaches and ask them not to vote for Nebraska over Colorado Given the bully pulpit the network already has, do you think the BCS poll gets bent in a direction that favors ESPN’s preferred schools, like USC, the SEC, and the Big Ten, or are there safeguards to prevent against ESPN using its on-air talent to lobby for certain programs?

HP: The ranking system that we have has a diversity of ways to rank teams. I suspect you can’t influence the computers, for one thing. And I’d be very surprised – notwithstanding some efforts – that voters in polls are influenced by what ESPN wants. We were with FOX, we took bids, ESPN made us a very attractive offer, they are good football partners, and we’ll see where it goes.

What! voters not influenced by ESPN that is the biggest lie every.  ESPN shows top teams in their highlights and teams from smaller leagues are not always on their highlight shows.

Look at the Mountain West who is no longer on ESPN and now on Versus, CBS College, and The Mtn; they hardly get any looks on the network.  ESPN would love to have USC in the title game every year, and while the talking heads may not say ESPN wants USC they will do their analysis and say they are ‘my’ best team.

In a time when coaches do not have time to watch other teams film to accurately rank the teams; they look at the highlight shows to see what they are saying and vote directly.

How often does a MAC team get mentioned on the air, and when they do it is probably once they are 8-0 and that could be too late for them to make a run at the BCS.

Q: The state of Utah intends to pursue this antitrust lawsuit against the BCS. Do you think that this is just a process the BCS is going to have to withstand before emerging the winner? Is there a way to resolve this without years of litigation? Is there a chance the BCS will lose?

HP: I’m not an antitrust lawyer, but I do find the general claim that this is an anti-competitive market difficult to understand. If you go back before the BCS and look at how many times schools in the group of five played in any of the major bowls.

I think you’re gonna find that the BCS has broadened their access to national markets rather than narrowed it, and I think if you look at how much income they got from postseason intercollegiate football before the BCS and look at how much income they’re now getting out of the BCS, I think you have to conclude that the BCS has given them more access and given them more income.

And it’s hard to see what the endgame is for this attack on the BCS on antitrust grounds. As I said: The alternative is not a playoff. The alternative is to go back to the system we had. That’s fine. Many of us would think that’s not a bad outcome.

The reason no non-BCS schools were invited to the big money games we have today is because of bowl tie-ins with conferences; also do not forget those backroom deals that had games set up in mid October.

Plus, look back at the old Bowl Coalition back in 1996 where BYU was ranked fifth in the final week of the poll and was passed over the current BCS bowls and were sent to the Cotton Bowl.  By current standards today BYU would have been in one of the BCS bowl games.

The income thing is tricky, because one can just go by dollar amount which increases because of inflation each year.  The only way money is more is when a non-BCS gets into a game, and even then that money spread among all of the non-BCS leagues and not just to the league that made it to the BCS.

This interview was a joke where Perlman was taking the BCS stance strictly and giving bogus half answers, and the best was using tradition to explain why Notre Dame gets its own rules within the BCS.

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