In general it seems as though the feelings towards the Bowl Championship Series are negative. Year after year there are debates as to who is the true #1 in the country when you have teams at the top who may have the same record yet one team is chosen over another to represent their school in the national championship game.
The same can be said with the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. Who should truly be playing in these games? Is it necessarily fair that a mediocre UConn team gets to play in a BCS game over Wisconsin who plays in a tougher Big Ten conference?
According to Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN.com some big changes may be coming to the BCS very soon.
Now these changes aren’t a playoff system that many are screaming for but Wojciechowski writes that the BCS may only be in charge of the National Championship Game rather than the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and the Championship Game.
The proposal also would eliminate automatic BCS bowl qualifying status currently given to the six major conferences. All conferences would be free to make their own deals with the 34 other existing bowls.
The reconfigured BCS would undergo significant change relative to its present revenue sharing system, too.
“There’s a lot of stuff being thrown at the wall,” said one official who attended the meetings. “I think the people in the room really want to get it right. They’re tired of getting beat up. So you’ll probably see us go slow on this one.”
The most radical of those ideas is also the least complicated: the BCS would be responsible only for creating a national championship between the two top teams in the country.
In addition to this, the winners of the BCS conferences (Big Ten, Pac-12, Big East, SEC, ACC and Big 12) will not gain automatic bids to BCS games if these changes were to take place.
Instead, Wojciechowski writes that in theory all schools part of the 11 FBS conferences including the independents would have an equal opportunity at the beginning of the year to reach the National Championship. And by eliminating the automatic qualifying clause, BCS officials hope that conference realignment and expansion — in some cases, done in hopes of securing AQ status — would subside.
This new format may also open the bidding to host the National Championship game.
So when will this ultimately take place? Possibly in 2013 when the current BCS cycle ends.
Ref: ESPN, BCS (image)
