Instead of BCS progress, fans get absolutely nothing

NEW ORLEANS -- They all smiled, proclaimed progress and gave us, the college football fans, nothing. In the end, what the BCS Presidential Advisory Committee vs. Presidential Coalition for Athletics Reform did here on Sunday was confuse the issue of postseason football, put it in a paper shredder, a wood chipper and ask the people who really care about the sport to understand.

Essentially, nothing happened here at a meeting that had been foreshadowed as producing significant progress in settling the BCS-non-BCS issue. After a four-hour meeting here the presidents agreed to go home, have their commissioners hire consultants and reconvene in 60-to-90 days.

Ah, the suits. Nobody does it better.

Nothing is off the table for 2006 and beyond except that we know coalition leader Scott Cowen and his constituents cannot be bought out. A bag of money laid on the porch of the five non-BCS conferences will not make them go away.

"That was not an option we talked about," Cowen said of the $110 million BCS bowl booty, 95 percent of which goes to BCS schools. "That is, keep everything the same and redistribute the money."

We also know that Cowen's BCS foes won't back down.

"I don't want to let the question pass without reaffirming our very clear view this is not a legal matter," said Oregon president Dave Frohnmayer, a former attorney general. "We are quite confident that there is not violation of the antitrust laws of the United States in the present configuration of the BCS."

That certainly clears things up, no? The two sides have met for a total of 6 1/2 hours in two cities over two months and agreed Sunday on "a range of possibilities." They won't tell us because, in a way, they can't. "Fixing" postseason football is like trying to round off pi.

There are so many masters to serve. Changing the BCS the tiniest bit begins with a set of contracts that are all due to expire soon. The Pac-10, Big Ten and Rose Bowl have one deal. The Rose Bowl has a separate deal with ABC. There's the BCS-ABC contract. Then the BCS has an agreement with the six conferences and Notre Dame.

How can ABC, just to pick one, know what it is bidding on at this point? The Rose Bowl is lobbying to get the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions more regularly. That seems to work against the BCS structure.

All we know for sure is that, "the 16-team NFL-style playoff is not appropriate," Cowen said. "Beyond that we didn't take anything else off the table."

Cowen has driven this discussion from the beginning. It's clear that he wants a playoff of some sort. Meanwhile, the BCS presidents are dead set against any extra football that would infringe on December finals or the second semester.

Semantically, Cowen considers an extra game after the four BCS bowls a playoff. That seems doable and possibly agreeable to both sides. But even then the bowls would balk. That would revert the Fiesta, Orange, Sugar and Rose to semifinal status and probably make fans decide further how to spend their money. Do they go to the Fiesta Bowl to watch State U. or save their money and hope their school makes the championship game?

And how to pick those two teams from among four winners?

Improved access for the have-nots is a definite possibility but not a clear solution either. Currently a non-BCS school is qualified in the top 12 of the final BCS rankings and automatic for a bowl if it finishes in the top six.

Giving automatic access to those finishing in the top 10, 12 or 15, as Cowen has suggested, presents a whole new set of problems. The least of which is defining the have-nots. Until the BCS commissioners get together and decide if the Big East retains its BCS bid after the 2006 bowls, we can't even proceed with the definition.

It's a mess, folks, and it's obvious the presidents can't handle it alone. It's hard to provide answers when they don't even know the questions yet.

That's why they invented retainers. Now the conferences are likely to call in the well-known consultants -- former CBS Sports president Neal Pilson and the industry's leading coaching search guru Chuck Neinas -- to see if their proposals will fly.

It will be interesting to see if the consultants and conferences can marry a new postseason structure with postseason Darwinism. The networks, the fans and the sport of basketball embrace a Gonzaga in the NCAA Tournament. The reaction is almost the opposite of a TCU in football.

That won't change no matter what the presidents come up with to solve the postseason dilemma. Again, so many masters. The bowl executives are loathe to have to sell a non-BCS school that doesn't have the cache -- built up over playing in many bowls, by the way -- that a traditional BCS power has.

The networks that so love a Gonzaga in basketball are skeptical about the ratings draw of its football equivalent.

"In football there are certain teams that will attract an audience and certain matchups that will attract an audience," said NCAA president Myles Brand, who is acting as facilitator in the discussions. "Some schools do better than others. It's much more important who is the fan base in football than it is in basketball."

That's because basketball delivers a Cinderella and a clear-cut champion. College football has yet to find a way to do either. In only three of the first five years of the BCS has the title-game matchup come close to matching what most folks would agree were the top two teams.

In the next morphing do we even call it the BCS?

"As to the issue to whether or not the BCS is dead, I don't think that terminal pronouncement is appropriate to answer at this point," Frohnmayer said at one point. Clearly there will be changes."

But what? Just please tell us something.

There was some definite news. Cowen figuratively waved his hand and agreed to call off the dogs, or whatever you want to call the grandstanding politicos on Capitol Hill. Two hearings in Washington regarding the BCS in recent months produced a lot of rhetoric and threats of legal action. The Utah attorney general (home of BYU, Utah and Utah State) made more antitrust noise over the weekend.

"My advice to all legislators would be to not do anything," Cowen said, "to allow this process to play itself out. That has been our position all along. Our side has been accused of controlling many things. We control the Senate, the House and attorneys general. We do not have that much power."

The posturing was not over, but dialed down. It had to be to decide, well, nothing.