Analyzing ‘Death To The BCS’ : Chapter Two

With the Miami Hurricanes sitting out a bowl game in 2011, there’s definitely some downtime this post-season and with the BCS looking as messy as ever, now seemed as good a time as any to revisit “Death To The BCS”, the book touted as ‘the definitive case against the Bowl Championship Series’.

“Death To The BCS” is a an eighteen-chapter read. Last week we focused on Chapter One : The Plan. Next up; Chapter Two : What Could Have Been.

– Back in May 1994, former Georgia head coach and then athletic director Vince Dooley attended the SEC meetings with the desire – and game plan – to help thrust college football into the future, or to maintain the broken status quo. Dooley was armed with a monster speech, a full-on slideshow and attended the meeting with the desire to bring change.

Dooley was a respected figure with a ton of influence and he came correct with an agenda and proposed playoff system. He understood more than most the business that is college football and wanted to win over his fellow SEC athletic directors at their annual get-together in Destin, FL.

– Back in October 1993, the NCAA had formed a high-level committee to ‘study’ a playoff, looking at every possible facet – academic concerns, weather patterns, TV schedules – and emerged with a 700-page report that was presented to a twenty-five member pan of “football and business royalty”, which included Dooley. Everything from a one-game championship to a sixteen-team playoff was on the table.

The playoff option would generate a huge influx of cash, which was critical for for the majority of schools which depend on that football revenue to fund their entire athletic departments. For this model to work, it needed the approval of the stakeholders.

– The plan outlined and sold by Dooley was a workable playoff plan that preserved the bowl system and created three additional games – two semifinal match-ups and a national championship. The plan called for the four teams to be selected after the January 1st bowl games.

The plan was immediately, albeit gracefully, stonewalled by Roy Kramer, then-commissioner of the SEC. “I think we’ll have another option,” Dooley recalled Kramer saying after the presentation.

– While Dooley had been working with the NCAA on a viable solution, Kramer helped orchestrate secret negotiations with commissioners of the five other conferences that eventually formed the core of The Cartel and the BCS. Dooley’s plan never had a chance, no matter how logical, viable and implementable it was.

There was a leadership void in college football and Kramer was that “alpha dog” ready to assert himself. At the time the SEC was as cutthroat as ever. As commissioner between 1990-2002, Kramer pioneered groundbreaking an profitable ideas like expanding the league to twelve teams and creating the conference championship game.

He also piloted the conference during an era of “rampant rule-breaking” with all twelve SEC athletic departments racking up at least one major violation conviction during his tenure.

– The major ‘equity conferences’ (ACC, Big Te, Big XIII, Big East, Pac-10 and SEC) didn’t object to a four-team playoff as much as they hated the idea of ceding control to the NCAA. The bowl system allowed the equity conferences to hoard 85% of the post-season revenue and while the NCAA-run men’s basketball tournament featured a more equitable distribution of post-season revenue, based on performance, et al – this was unacceptable.

In the end, the six conferences used their strength to squash the minority, afraid of the unforeseen or the unknown.

–  Less than two weeks after Dooley’s presentation in spring 1994, Kramer and his cohorts unveiled the precursor of the BCS – The Bowl Alliance.

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