Unpredictable season won't necessarily encourage BCS changes

NEW YORK -- One wild and unpredictable college football season won't cause the Bowl Championship Series to change.

BCS coordinator and Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive was asked during a conference call with reporters Wednesday if the increased parity in college football this season would make some type of major college football playoff more likely in the future.

Slive said that his position hasn't changed since he took over as coordinator after the 2005 season: He's open to change, but an NFL-style playoff with eight or more teams won't happen any time soon.

As he has said many times before, Slive said he was open to discussions about the BCS going to a plus-one format, which would match the top two teams in the country after the four major bowls are played.

"You know, we are looking at that as a potential option for some modification, but I don't see anything beyond that," Slive said. "And I'm not saying that (plus-one) can't happen, but I'm certainly open-minded and at least from my perspective looking very, very hard drilling down into that concept."

Currently, there are five BCS games and the matchups are set following the regular season, with the top two teams playing in the BCS championship game. Missouri (11-1) and West Virginia (10-1) each need one more victory Saturday to earn a spot in the national title game.

With Hawaii as the only unbeaten team left in major college football, the national title game is assured of having no undefeated team for just the second time. It also happened after the 2003 season, when Oklahoma and LSU played in the Sugar Bowl for the BCS national title and USC won the Associated Press national title by beating Michigan in the Rose Bowl.

If West Virginia and Missouri both lose Saturday, a two-loss team could play in the national title game for the first time.

"Rather than talking about a playoff I'd like to phrase it: Is one and two enough," Slive said. "And I have three concepts that I always say that for me personally are important:

"One is protect the regular season. It might be trite to say there's a playoff every weekend, but there is. Secondly, we value the Bowl system. It gives a lot of student athletes an opportunity to compete for additional championships. And thirdly, there's an academic component. I know there are cynics about that, but there's an academic component, and we are going to keep football as a one-semester sport."