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Thursday, January 3, 2008
Still waiting for a good BCS game
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New Orleans— Well, we’ve had three BCS games and three blowouts. The only thing compelling thus far was the way that West Virginia just destroyed (48-28) Oklahoma when nobody gave the Mountaineers a shot.
If we have another lopsided game tonight in the Orange Bowl (Virginia Tech vs. Kansas), the conference commissioners who run the BCS are going to catch some heat. And they probably should.
Here’s the honest truth that nobody on TV, and certainly nobody with a financial interest in these bowls, will tell you. The commissioners had it within their power to make better match-ups in the BCS bowls but that requires everybody involved to say “yes.” And trust me when I tell you that this group of people cannot agree on whether or not the sky is blue.
Consensus on anything is hard to come by in the bowl business because each conference has its own agenda and wants to protect its interests and its relationships.
There was no way the Big Ten, for example, was going to agree to let Georgia play in the Rose Bowl instead of Illinois. If I’m Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, it’s my job to use all of the political power I have to protect my conference.
And if I’m SEC commissioner Mike Slive, I’m not going to let the Rose take Georgia away from my bowl partner, the Sugar. The Sugar has already lost LSU to the BCS championship game and needs Georgia to protect its game. It is Slive’s job to protect the long-term interests of the SEC and not sacrifice them for one game in one year. That is what the SEC presidents pay him to do.
And quite frankly, if I’m the other BCS commissioners, why would I want to just give the Rose Bowl the best game (Southern Cal-Georgia) of the season? The Rose Bowl, along with the Big Ten and Pac-10, basically hold the rest of the BCS hostage to any kind of meaningful change. They have their own TV deal with ABC. They operate in their own universe.
Why in the word would the other commissioners want to help those guys?
And if you said “for the good of the fans,” you obviously don’t know about the bowl bidness.
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