BCS Playoffs: Big Ten Bid Plan Only Causes More Confusion

Jim Delany told ESPN.com that he thinks there'll be a bid process for hosts of the BCS National Championship game under the new playoff proposal. This is not an unusual development by any stretch—predetermined host sites are commonplace in both professional and collegiate championships, and those usually are chosen by a bid process.

Here's the way Delany described it (via ESPN):

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"I think the championship game in any scenario is going to be independently bid, not part of the bowl situation," commissioner Jim Delany said Wednesday after wrapping up two days of meetings.

"If you looked at the options that we brought back to our conferences—one is inside the bowl, one is outside the bowl—in either case, I think the information indicated that the championship game would be bid out."

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In a vacuum, this is sensible. As mentioned before, most championships are conducted this way, and with any luck, what the Final Four brings to its host city every year, the BCS Championship can accomplish as well.

More importantly, Delany notes that this process happens outside the bowl system and nobody loses their minds over it—as you would hope.

Contrast that, then, with the Big Ten's dismissal of home sites for semifinal playoff games in favor of the Rose Bowl. Here, the tone changes considerably:

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"There was a pretty strong consensus among the ADs that we'd like to have the playoff within the bowl system," Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said.

"It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields. ... But the bowls have been good to us. If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system."

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To reiterate: The championship game would take place outside of the bowls, and that is okay. Take the semifinals out, and the bowl system is—and I quote—"pretty much destroyed."

One cannot, in good conscience, take both of these statements at face value. If the bowl system is so fragile that the Rose Bowl can't handle losing access to a third- or fourth-ranked Big Ten team, then it's got all the robustness of an elderly person on a skateboard.

But that's not the case. The Football Bowl Association is very proud of itself! It does many good things! It even said so in a large pamphlet sent to FWAA members earlier this week, touting the economic benefits for both the host cities and the participating schools and the long tradition involved.

Nowhere is it mentioned in this thing that the whole system can be demolished by conducting a playoff semifinal outside of the bowls. That seems like rather pertinent information, and a concept that would definitely require explanation. None there.

So forgive fans one and all for wondering why a playoff semifinal involving a Big Ten team would have to be in Pasadena to save the entire bowl system, but the championship game itself can be wherever.

The Big Ten has done a remarkably poor job explaining these two incongruous ideas, and speaking in platitudes about tradition isn't going to fix that.

The Big Ten owes its fans more.