Non-BCS team in Rose Bowl? Here's how it will happen

To accommodate the coalition schools, earlier this year the BCS added a fifth game. The "piggyback" model means that the four bowls will rotate playing host to two games once every four years. Presumably, those same-site games will be a week to 10 days apart.

What is so earth-shaking is the perception that the Rose's tradition is being further diluted. From 1946 through 1997, the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-10 met exclusively each New Year's in Pasadena.

When it agreed to join the BCS, the Rose knew it would most likely lose its traditional partners at least once every four years. But it went two consecutive years (2001-2002) without its Pac-10-Big Ten game because of BCS language that allowed Iowa to play in the Orange Bowl in 2002.

Now with addition of a second game once every four years and coalition qualifiers, what, some might ask, has become of the Granddaddy of Them All?

"I think that the game involving a Big Ten and Pac-10 champion will never be perceived as (devalued)," Delany said. "I think you could put a Super Bowl in there the following week and that (previous) game could stand on its own merit."

Better coalition access and retaining the Big East's automatic bid, some believe, devalues the BCS as a whole as it goes to the negotiating table. Now in 2006, instead of six BCS champions and two at-large teams, there will seven automatics (if a coalition team qualifies) and three at-large teams.

"At the end of the game, maybe it's good for college football," Delany said, "but it's something that probably wouldn't have gotten done without a great amount of pressure from (the coalition schools)."