BCS Agrees to Add Fifth Bowl Game (For College Football Fans )

Myway News ^ | Mar 1, 12:46 PM (ET) | MARK LONG

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) - The Bowl Championship Series agreed to add a fifth game Sunday, increasing access for schools not part of college football's most lucrative postseason system.

The champions of the six BCS conferences - the Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10 - will maintain automatic berths in one of the five games. The remaining four spots will be at-large berths to be decided by a complex formula using national rankings.

The fifth bowl is still subject to final approval based on market viability, but all indications point to it being in place when the new BCS contract takes effect before the 2006 season.

"This agreement is a significant victory for college sports and higher education," NCAA president Myles Brand said.

The current BCS bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange. One of those bowls pits the top two teams in the BCS standings in a championship game, which will be the Orange Bowl next season. The Rose, Fiesta and Sugar host the other games.

Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer, a member of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, said the fifth bowl would join in the title game rotation. He also said the Rose Bowl would retain its long-standing ties to the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions during years in which it does not host the title game. The other bowls also would have the chance to protect conference ties.

Frohnmayer said existing bowls probably will get the first shot at becoming the fifth BCS bowl. Cities expected to show immediate interest include Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Jacksonville, Orlando and San Diego.

"We are envisioning a bowl of equal stature in terms of its command of television audiences and its desirability from a standpoint of teams," Frohnmayer said. "Whether that would come from the volunteering of an existing bowl system and its own structure or the creation of a new bowl, that's something we simply can't determine at this point."

Smaller schools complain that the BCS makes it impossible for them to win the national championship and puts them at a financial and recruiting disadvantage.

The BCS Presidential Oversight Committee and the Coalition for Athletics Reform, which has been fighting to change the current system, agreed to the changes after a six-hour meeting Sunday. It was third meeting in nine months of wrangling.

Tulane president Scott Cowen, the leader of the Coalition for Athletics Reform, said they agreed on access rules for non-BCS schools but refused to give details until after the new rules are presented to the conferences.

He said that using the new system, a non-BCS school would have played in a BCS bowl in four of the last six seasons. He declined to say which teams or which seasons.

"It's a significant improvement from where we are right now," Cowen said.

The committee and the BCS conceded that the new changes do not guarantee that a team from a non-BCS conference will play in one of the BCS bowls.

The BCS bowls generate more than $110 million a year for the big conferences. The BCS gives about $6 million a year to smaller conferences. Frohnmayer said those figures should increase under the new format.

"It's our hope that the interest in the series will be heightened by the availability of one more game," he said. "It's our hope that this whole new system will generate more revenue."

Since ABC owns the current television rights to BCS games, Frohnmayer said the network would get a chance to negotiate a new contract under the five-bowl format.

Negotiations with the bowls and TV networks begin soon, starting almost immediately with next year's Rose Bowl, putting some sense of urgency to the talks.

"Today is a very good day for college athletics," Cowen said. "This has been a difficult and contentious issue to deal with for the last nine months."

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Footbal should be Football in the title!

[Lost Highway]

Anything that determines a "Champion" by anything other than one team playing another is nothing more than figure skating with helmets.

[Uncle Hal]

Can you spell MONEY?

[sean327]

This is nothing more than a half-assed attempt to shut those of us up who want a true playoff system. This will not solve the problem, give us a true playoff now! Let it be decided the way every one else does! This all about greed. The Big Confrences want it all for themselves.

[MetalHeadConservative35]

ok assuming that i dont know a whole lot about the system

i think that we need a playoff system in the bowls

Example Rose bowl 2 teams Sugar Bowl 2 teams: whoever wins outta those 2 games play each other fiesta bowl and orange bowl: the winner outta those 2 play each other then whoever wins outta those 2 rounds play each other in a deciding game

[whattajoke]

this does nothing to solve anything, but what's great about it is, as a UCONN grad, my alma mater will be in a BCS Bowl before those sell outs from Chestnut Hill ever will be.

F BC.

[alancarp]

Part of ABC's negotiations for the additional game would undoubtedly include Orlando for the site -- they already own the rights to televise the Citrus bowl, which has kinda been operating as the first "non-BCS bowl" anyway... however -- as they say -- stay tuned, for money talks.

[sean327]

That still doesn't address the problem. A true playoff will include all Division I confrences. Give the Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, PAC 10, and the Big East 2 slots each. Give the Mountain West, MAC, Confrence USA,the WAC, and the Sun Belt one slot each and let them determine it on the field. The existing Bowl structure can be used. Rotate the Championship game between the BCS bowls as it's done now. The lower tier Bowls would serve as the Tournament.

[BigSkyFreeper]

They still don't get it.

[BigSkyFreeper]

What about the Big Sky Conference?

[BigSkyFreeper]

Why don't they just get rid of the BCS, and that puts everyone on an even keel. The BCS is the problem, not the number of bowl games. Adding one more bowl game isn't going to solve the problem, it just compounds it.

[MetalHeadConservative35]

so that's kinda along the lines of having a tournament from the start?

if it does,that might work

[PRND21]

We need the bowl that would have pitted USC against LSU in mid January. Anything else is window dressing.

[BigSkyFreeper]

If the continue to use a computer to "hand pick" the games, that'll never happen.

[Lunatic Fringe]

Hmm, I'm sure this wont confuse the BCS system... nope, not one bit.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Smaller schools complain that the BCS makes it impossible for them to win the national championship and puts them at a financial and recruiting disadvantage.

A conference like the Big Sky not only is at a disadvantage financially for recruiting talent to their schools, they're at a disadvantage because media outlets like ESPN, CBS, and ABC don't even bother to mention them whatsoever, even during the regular season. Nevermind the fact that small schools are at a disadvatage whether there's one more bowl game or not, the fact is, smaller schools will continue to be at a disadvatage because they lack the media exposure that primarily goes to such schools as Oklahoma, Michigan, Ohio, LSU, USC, UCLA, etc.

The Big Sky Conference exists, most of the country hasn't heard of it because the media never even mentions it, even on a 24 hour sports channel.

[So Cal Rocket]

Limit teams to 12 Regular Season Games (11 if their conference has a Conference Championship game)

Top 8 Teams go to BCS Championship Series. Teams ranked 9 and below go to the Outback Bowl, Holiday Bowl, Sun Bowl, etc.

Late December:
- Cotton Bowl: Number 1 vs. Number 8
- Fiesta Bowl: Number 2 vs. Number 7
- Gator Bowl: Number 3 vs. Number 6
- Peach Bowl: Number 4 vs. Number 5

January 1st:
- Orange Bowl: Winner of Cotton Bowl vs. Winner of Peach Bowl
- Sugar Bowl: Winner of Fiesta Bowl vs. Winner of Gator Bowl

Mid - January:
- Rose Bowl: Winner of Orange Bowl vs. Winner of Sugar Bowl for the National Championship

[CSM]

More efficiently you could admit 8 teams into the playoff. The conference champions from the 6 major conferences, then 2 at large teams. It would work well without adding to many games to any team's season.

[Prolifeconservative]

This is the most idiotic thing Collegiate football could have done on so many levels. Instead of 2-4 teams claiming themselves a shot at the National Championship come January, you will have 4-10 teams claiming their due.

If BCS "powers that be" wanted credibility for their formula to establish a REAL and GENUINE Champion less the controversy, they would have decreased the BCS bowls from 4 down to 2,....or maybe just one and be done with it. This is flat out stupid and an attempt at creating more dilution and further controversy in the name of money.

This is the equivalent of all these stupid bowl games coming into vogue in the last ten years. In 20 years we are going to have 10 BCS bowls, wait and see.

Fans want an undiluted champion, or at least the very shot at one.