Mike Adams, the president of the NCAA executive committee, has proposed an eight-team college football playoff in a letter to NCAA president Myles Brand, according to a report in today's Atlanta Journal-Cons ution.
Adams, the president of the University of Georgia, made the proposal following last night's 38-24 LSU (12-2) victory over Ohio State (11-2), which made the Tigers the 2007 BCS National Champions.
The consideration of abolishing or changing the BCS is not new. In fact, the formula to pick the top two BCS teams to compete in the BCS national championship has changed almost annually since inception in 1999.
What is new, however, is a university president with the clout of Adams asking for a formal review of the BCS and proposing a playoff system for college football.
According to the AJC, Adams' proposal included an eight-team single-elimination tournament. Such a plan, Adams says, would not affect second-tier bowls, but would obviously interfere with the BCS bowls.
Adams hopes to discuss his proposal later this week in Nashville at NCAA meetings.
But before anything can be changed, several other apparent obstacles must be hurdled:
A system must be agreed upon. While Adams favors an eight-team playoff, other presidents have said they favor a "Plus One" game, which essentially amounts to a four-team playoff.
University presidents must vote on the process, and the AJC article quotes a president from both Oregon and Ohio State which oppose a playoff.
The BCS has a television pact with Fox Networks that runs through 2010. The Rose Bowl, however, while still a part of the BCS has a separate television contract with ABC, which runs through 2014. Either the new system would not initially include the Big 10 and Pac-10, which would seem unlikely but not impossible, or some sort of compromise amongst conferences and networks must be reached.
Even though the obstacles may be difficult to overcome, according to Adams, it's clear a playoff system is needed.
"This year's experience with the BCS forces me to the conclusion that the current system has lost public confidence and simply does not work," Adams said. "It is undercutting the sportsmanship and integrity of the game."
Football is the most popular college sport, yet it is the only sport that does not have a tournament where national championships are won and lost on the field of play in a tournament format. In fact, even within college football, only the highest level of play does not have a tournament, while its lower levels do.
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