Sometimes, your honesty is refreshing.

The antidote to Bill Hancock’s BCS bullshit…

… After conference commissioners met for almost 10 hours, a giddy Hancock emerged from a conference room and — for once — said something we can celebrate instead of mock.

“I can take status quo off the table,” Hancock said.

But this is the BCS. So, naturally, Hancock qualified his statement a few minutes later.

“The BCS as we know it — the exact same policies will not continue,” Hancock said. “That does not mean that there is definitely going to be a four-team event or a plus-one.”

… is this:

“Either way, everybody’s gonna be bent out of shape,” Richt said, laughing. “The way it is now, people will be bent out of shape if it’s just four.”

Ain’t that the troof.

I don’t get the celebratory reaction to Hancock’s statement.  Of course the status quo is going to get reworked.  The fix was in on that as soon as the conference commissioners took a close look at the attendance and viewership numbers from this past bowl season.

The problem now, as it has been all along, is achieving a consensus on what the replacement for the status quo will be.  And as Staples’ article indicates, as problems go, it’s a big ‘un.

Here’s just one example of what they’ve got to overcome.

… Scott would like to see a system that weighs strength of schedule more heavily. “If we go to a four-team playoff, then we’re essentially going to put more stock in the playoff,” Scott said. “The plan, from my perspective, would be a more credible, objective, fair system that balances strength of schedule. We all don’t play over the same course. Every conference has got different caliber. Some conferences play nine conference games. Some play eight. Some play stronger out-of-conference competition. Some tend to not. They just want to get home games.”

Take that, Mike Slive.  (My guess is he won’t.)

I don’t want to say a lot of the debate is insurmountable.  But what they’ve got to overcome in the next few weeks is certainly formidable.  While I don’t believe they’ll throw up their hands and stick with what they’ve done – that’s not where the money is, after all – it would surprise me less and less if they don’t fall back on a true plus-one, a title game after all the bowls are played in which the top two teams face off, as their default.  The fans get a new shiny toy, the schools get another game from which to generate revenue and the commissioners get to put off all the hard decisions that can’t reach agreement on for another day.  Which will no doubt come.

Meanwhile, nobody will listen to Mark Richt.

“Just tell me what the rules are. Tell me what the deal is and we’ll play by it,” he said. “I don’t know what is the right answer. But I would not want to change college football much. College football is a great sport. It’s an unbelievable regular season. Probably more exciting than any regular season in any sport. So we want to be careful to make sure we know what we’re looking for.”

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UPDATE:  A sixteen-team playoff is off the table.  For now.  Woo hoo!