While there’s something straightforward about matching 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 and then letting the winners face off in the BCS title game, there’s a significant logistics problem with that format, namely, the Rose Bowl’s insistence that it be able to maintain its traditional Big Ten-Pac 10 pairing while remaining a top tier postseason venue (a privilege it certainly pays for).
If you can’t get around the Rose Bowl roadblock and you’re still trying to find a way to tweak the postseason formula to get a BCS title game matchup that satisfies more of the critics, it’s off to Plan B.
From Matt Hayes, in the Sporting News, comes this tidbit on an alternative Plus-One arrangement:
Administrators will again explore a plus-one championship model at the annual BCS meetings next week in Fort Lauderdale — but this time, according to BCS sources, with the specific intention of appeasing the Big Ten and Pac-10. Both conferences are against further tweaking the formula; Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen told me last fall his league would break away from the championship series if a plus-one model becomes a reality. The focus this time: finding a way to secure the Rose Bowl for the Big Ten and Pac-10, no matter how the series formula plays out. The Rose Bowl organization also has concerns about the current double-hosting format, and those concerns likely will lead to the addition of a fifth BCS site (Atlanta or Dallas). A plus-one model — which would provide a championship game between the two highest-ranked teams after the bowl games — would give the series more bargaining power in the next television negotiations, which are expected to begin this fall. But the series has to have the Big Ten and Pac-10 on board to make such a move. Network television won’t pay top dollar for a series without two conferences and two of the sport’s most television-friendly schools (USC and Ohio State). If the BCS does go to a plus-one model, it won’t happen until the 2010 season. . . .
There are pluses (heh) and minuses to this proposal. It’s good for the networks, because all of the conferences are on board and there’s more product with one more game. It’s good for the schools for the same reason (more product means more money, of course). It’s good for the one other bowl game that gets elevated to BCS status (I’d bet on Dallas, with that football palace Jerry Jones is constructing). And it’s good, of course, for the Rose Bowl.
For the fans, though, it’s a mixed bag. One the one hand, the BCS games are strengthened, since #1 and #2 would be included in the mix. Looking at last year, for example, Ohio State would have been slotted in the Rose Bowl, instead of Illinois, to play USC. On the other hand, with ten schools participating in the BCS games, it’s very easy to construct a scenario where more than two schools have an argument that they belong in the title game. Which means all that’s been accomplished is to put off the same argument being made now for one week later.
That would make for good fodder on ESPN and the college football Blogosphere, though. From my selfish standpoint, there’s something to be said for an extra week of subject matter to blather about.
Get The Picture 
Senator,
I knew yesterday that you were going to post this.
Sincerely,
Urban
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Frankly, I think we should dump the Rose Bowl from the picture and not in an accommodating way. If the pompous @sses at the Big Ten, Pasadena and the Pac-10 want their special game, let them have it. And the rest of us will participate without them in the post-season.
I get so tired of college football kissing their butts as if they have the market on great football.
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JC, that would be an expensive proposition for college football.
Plus, what kind of BCS title game would you have with schools like USC and OSU out of the mix?
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One good thing about that extra week of blather is that it completely changes the month of December. Instead of “man, UGA/USC/etc got screwed, LSU lost to Arkansas!” followed by resignation to the fates/playoff moaning, we’d get arguments like “Welllll… if Georgia beats Kansas in Dallas (for example), but LSU loses to Hawaii, would you take Georgia or Hawaii to play the USC/Ohio State winner?”
It’s like an extra week of out-of-conference play, scheduled on the fly. I like it.
BTW, JasonC, they tried that idea in the mid-90s and called it the Bowl Alliance; it sucked. It just isn’t feasible to exclude those two conferences, so we ended up with the BCS replacing it.
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It’s like an extra week of out-of-conference play, scheduled on the fly. I like it.
Plus, if things don’t sort down to two obvious schools playing for the MNC, you’ve still got the same old “so-and-so got screwed” argument to make before, during and after the BCS title game.
It’s welfare for college football bloggers and pundits.
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