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It's 2014. Flying cars clog the airways at rush hour. The first robot president (not counting W) is in office. McDonald's debuts the first Quarter Pounder pill.
And USC and Illinois are getting ready to meet in the Rose Bowl. Maybe it's UCLA and Purdue, or Washington and Michigan.
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| Don't expect the postseason format to look rosy until around 2014. (Getty Images) |
If there is a theme going into the 10th round of BCS bowls, it's obvious: Get used to it. For all the speculation about a playoff looming on the horizon, it seems that none of the speculators took contract law. If they had, they'd know that the deal between the Pac-10, Big Ten and Rose Bowl still has six years to run.
That's all you need to know about the future of Division I-A postseason football. The three other BCS bowls begin renegotiating a new contract next year. The contracts between Fox and those three other bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Sugar) expire after the 2010 bowls. The Rose Bowl's deal with the Big Ten, Pac-10 and ABC runs through the 2014 game.
See a slight conflict there?
That means forget a playoff, or a tweak or Myles Brand. Any changes to the current format will have to have the approval of that holy trinity (Rose, Pac-10, Big Ten). And the holy trinity isn't budging anytime soon. The contracts of the four major bowls probably won't line up again until that robot president is in office.
Take a gander at this season's Rose Bowl for proof that the current system is set in cement. With a chance to match USC against a higher-rated opponent, the Rose chose Illinois, the lowest-rated at-large team in the history of the BCS (No. 13 in the final standings). That solidified the Pac-10-Big Ten bond that goes back 60 years.
That's a bond that existed before the BCS and, as far as the Rose is concerned will exist despite the BCS. Remember, the Rose is the only bowl where the parade is more important than the game. And if the matchup damages the hype for the floats, that's unacceptable.
That's why the first BCS championship game in the Rose Bowl (Nebraska-Miami, 2002) went down like a spoiled Pinot Noir to Pasadena traditionalists. That's why the Rose folks don't want to risk what happened in 2003. Oklahoma and Washington State met in the lowest-rated Rose Bowl of the BCS era. That's why you'll never see the Rose "stained" by the likes of Boise State or Hawaii. The bowl apparently has special dispensation from taking a non-BCS team in the double-hosting format.
So what makes you think the holy trinity is going to be talked into a playoff or even a modest plus-one? Money? Perhaps only the SEC makes more than the Big Ten. Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said last summer his conference would pull out if a playoff was instituted.
It will take a monumental financial crisis for the presidents to inch toward a playoff. One avenue is if the bowls ever lost their tax-exempt status. But the bowls spent huge amounts of time and money on keeping that status. The four BCS bowls have paid a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm $500,000 since January 2003 according to the Orange County Register.
The firm is run by former Oklahoma congressman and quarterback J.C. Watts.
Is it a racket? Yes, a pretty good one. If you want a playoff, you might have to start lobbying Congress yourself. Those who control the system are way ahead of you.
• Where's the crisis at the Fiesta Bowl, which claimed $22 million in assets in 2006?
• Where's the crisis in the stands, where I-A attendance has increased in each of the last 11 seasons?
• Where's the crisis on television, where the major networks had their best regular-season ratings since 1999? We'll have flying cars before we have a playoff.