Big Ten Football: Jim Delany's Latest Comments Sound Like Committee Endorsement

Jim Delany spoke to reporters before another commissioners' meeting on Wednesday, and while he committed to nothing and endorsed nothing, it's starting to get a little easier to read between the lines as to what the Big Ten is going to want out of the postseason.

Here are some of the comments Delany made to reporters—this and this to Stewart Mandel of SI.com, and this to Adam Rittenberg of ESPN.com:

"

Jim Delany just met w/ media here in Chicago pre-BCS meeting. Emphasized he "never, ever" pushed for all conference champions, wants hybrid.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) June 20, 2012"

"

Delany says winning conference should be a "tiebreaker" when teams bunched together in rankings.

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) June 20, 2012"

"

Delany: "I was never a champions-only advocate. Commissioner Kramer was. Commissioner Delany wasn't." Advocated hybrid first. #bcsmeetings

— Rittenberg/Bennett (@ESPN_BigTen) June 20, 2012"

As for what role polls and scheduling should play in the decision-making, here's more from Delany in this video from ESPN.com (sorry, no embedding). Essentially, it's that preseason polls have no place in the process, while schedules should be considered.

Is this sensible? Yes, definitely.

Rigid postseason guidelines that supersede rankings are a net negative for college football; heck, they're precisely what knocked the BCS out of public favor in the first place. People don't want to see highly-ranked teams get passed up for mediocre champions.

Moreover, as it stands right now, nothing matters more in college football than the record—the record, the record, the record. Granted, that goes hand-in-hand with the "every game matters" and "the most important regular season in sports" concepts that typify college football.

But that mindset leads to non-conference cupcake schedules, with rivalry games as decorative sprinkles. We don't really want a championship contender that played four Northwest Butt States to start the year. then took advantage of a top-heavy (if not outright weak) conference schedule, do we?

Put it all together: extra consideration for conference champions in a tie-breaker, incorporating schedule strength, eschewing preseason rankings as a data point and emphasizing entire season resumes instead of preseason strength. Doesn't that sound an awful lot like what the NCAA Tournament committee does for basketball every year?

After all, there aren't ties when it comes to teams that are Nos. 3-6 in college football. Not with thousands of poll points and multiple polls in play. So the only way to determine that those teams are "bunched together" is if a voter or committee member or other human entity of whatever designation decides they're bunched together. It's all terribly subjective.

And you know what? That's fine. We've tried objectifying the process of determining selecting the best teams, and by and large fans aren't satisfied with it. At the end of the day, "best" in a sport with 120 teams and only 12-13 games per team in a season isn't an easily quantifiable notion. It's every bit a matter of perception as anything else.

Delany's comments, then, make it sound like human decision should be part of whatever postseason structure is involved, whether it be a plus-one or a four-team tourney. And he's probably not wrong.