The remaking of college football’s postseason continued to take shape Friday, with the SEC and the Big 12 announcing a five-year deal that will match teams from the two leagues in a New Year’s Day bowl game.
The deal calls for the SEC and Big 12 champions to meet in an undetermined bowl starting with the 2014 season, unless one or both play in the four-team playoff that also is expected to begin that season. In the likely event that the SEC and/or Big 12 champs are picked for the playoff, the bowl would feature other teams from those conferences.
The site of the SEC-Big 12 bowl is up in the air, and Chick-fil-A Bowl president Gary Stokan expressed interest in bringing the game to Atlanta.
“If we have the opportunity, we definitely would be interested in bidding, just as we would be very interested in bidding for the national championship game if it is decided to bid that out,” Stokan said.
How the SEC-Big 12 alliance will affect other leagues and other bowls was among the questions raised by Friday’s announcement, which clearly seemed to be a major development in college football’s transformation from the BCS era to what-comes-next.
“A new January bowl tradition is born,” SEC commissioner Mike Slive said in a statement announcing the deal. Acting Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas called the deal “a landmark agreement” that “will have tremendous resonance in college football.”
The deal is similar to the long arrangement between the Big Ten and Pac-12, whose champions meet in the Rose Bowl when, under the current system, they aren’t in the BCS title game.
Current BCS and bowl contracts expire after the 2013 season, and conference commissioners have been working for months on a new system that would transform the much-criticized BCS into a limited playoff.
Many issues remain unresolved about the playoff, such as how the teams would be chosen and where the games would be played. But all indications are that some form of four-team tournament will be enacted, with conferences making their own bowl deals for teams not in the playoff.
The site of the SEC-Big 12 matchup will be determined by the conferences’ next round of bowl-contract negotiations.
New Orleans’ Sugar Bowl, which has a long tie-in with the SEC, is believed to be a leading candidate. But other bowls surely will be interested, including the Fiesta, which often hosts the Big 12 champ under the BCS system; the Cotton, which is played in the Dallas Cowboys’ state-of-the-art stadium; and the Chick-fil-A.
“With the relationships we have in college football, particularly with the SEC in this case, and with having the College Football Hall of Fame coming to Atlanta, and with having a new stadium potentially online by 2017, this would be an excellent opportunity for Atlanta to host the Big 12-SEC game,” Stokan said.
“But we don’t know right now whether the game would be hosted annually in one city or hosted on a rotating basis. We just don’t know enough right now.”
The SEC and Big 12 said specifics would be addressed later. The site likely won’t be determined until it is decided whether the playoff semifinals will be held in existing bowls and, if so, which ones.
The new SEC-Big 12 bowl is expected to command the richest TV contract of any college-football postseason game aside from the playoff and the Rose Bowl.
“This new game will provide a great matchup between the two most successful conferences in the BCS era,” Slive said, “and will complement the exciting postseason atmosphere created by the new four-team [playoff] model.”
“Our goal is to provide fans across the country with a New Year’s Day prime-time tradition,” said Neinas, who will be succeeded as Big 12 commissioner on June 15 by former Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby.
Among the complexities surrounding the SEC-Big 12 deal: What happens if the leagues’ champions are paired against each other in a playoff semifinal? In that case, it appears the leagues would share two postseason games.
The deal brings together leagues that recently were on opposite sides of the conference-realignment battles. Texas A&M and Missouri decided last year to leave the Big 12 for the SEC, where they will begin play this fall.
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