Why President Obama Can't Clean Up BCS
Big Ten and Pac Ten Set Tone in 1946 With Iron Clad Vote
Nov 16, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama said in Sunday's Toledo Blade that he would encourage the idea of trimming back on the regular college football season to accommodate a three-week, eight-team national playoff that would allow for the regular participation of one and two-loss teams.
Academia Doesn't Produce Dollars
College and university presidents laud their academic programs, but no matter how well organized and presented, these programs are not the money draw for their venues.
The dollar value of a winning football program was set in 1946 when the Big Ten and the Pac (Pacific) Ten agreed to control Rose Bowl participation. At that time, a Rose Bowl victory dictated the national college football championship.
Present System Instituted for Dollar Value
Automatic berths to college football's present Bowl Championship Series were set from the get-go by the colleges and universities who have the most football earnings power. Ohio State University's decision to hold its football team out of the 1961 Rose Bowl set a controversial tone that still thrives: academia, or athletics?
As it stands now, the regular season is the playoff, and the lucrative bowl games are invitations to universities and colleges for their dollar value. The institutions with the largest fan bases regularly get invitations if they can achieve at least six pigskin wins.
OSU Rose Bowl Decision of 1961
The Ohio State University's faculty council, by a 28 to 25 vote in 1961, suceeded in bringing to the public's attention the opposite of what it wished to achieve: preventing the OSU football team from going to Pasadena, California to compete in the Rose Bowl after the squad had won the Big Ten title with an 8-0-1 (one tie) record because, the faculty scathingly declared, OSU was gaining an unwanted reputation as a "football school", an image that hurt its academic standing.
Incredibly, the 1961 council, in an action that was to cast iron clad public controversy on college football's future, agreed to collect "its share of the Rose Bowl receipts"! By conference agreement, Rose Bowl receipts are always split among Big Ten schools after the participating team's expenses are calculated off the top.
Minnesota played in the 1961 Rose Bowl as the Big Ten second choice invitee even though a 1959 vote of Big Ten schools to renew the '46 pact was split five to five.
Automatic Money Berths Rule
Before the BCS came along, the Rose Bowl was joined by the Orange, the Cotton, and the Sugar bowls so more universities and colleges could be included in championship games and resulting receipts. Since the Bowl Championship Series was adopted, the number of bowls has mushroomed, and the argument to "fairly" revamp the BCS into a top eight, or ten, or twelve week-by-week playoff to determine a clear national champion has raged.
Other athletic programs -- soccer, basketball, baseball, etc. -- are scaled to a season's end playoff, or tournament. Other football programs, from junior high to professional teams, have playoffs, or tournaments.
The college football bowl system was geared from the beginning as a money maker. More bowls were added to gain and spread the wealth. Its present automatic BCS berths system expediates the process, ironically by way of academic power.
Presidential BCS End Around
The next major question regarding the college football championship arrangement may be, "Should the U.S. President (the government) decide the fate of the BCS"?
It's conceivable that a Presidential BCS End Around could create more playoff controversy rather than score a desired touchdown.
Resources:
Toledo Blade newspaper -- The Official Ohio State Football Encyclopedia, compiled by The Ohio State University and Jack Park
