Will the BCS organization morph into a new NCAA?

[ncbama]

If this has been discussed I apologize. I just don't remember it.

It seems to me that this BCS organization is the perfect vehicle for:
1. Separating the big schools from the mass of also rans that seem to want to bring down the biggies
2. Establishing a more authoritative organization for dealing with issues such as Camgate
3. Having a playoff system for the national championship

By "selecting out" the top 90-100 schools that can handle big time football, the playing field becomes much easier to define and monitor.

And now two questions:

What conferences now constitute the BCS organization?
What conferences should be included should the BCS alternative to the NCAA become a reality?

Could it be that our friends at API will be the cause of the demise of the NCAA as we know it? (yeah, that's a third question, but I can't count)

I guess what started me thinking about this was when the Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, John Swofford, made public statements of displeasure at the way the NCAA handled Camgate. I have since heard of similar concern all across the country. Apparently the NCAA has lost its ability to deal with the kinds of issues faced by schools of the size and complexity of those in BCS conferences.

 

[BamaNation]

What should happen is what I've been arguing for for over 20 years...the BCS conferences (comprising of between 65-75 schools) should break away from the insaneness of the NCAA. These schools are funding the whole criminal enterprise that siphons funds from them to the William & Mary's of the world. They should form a super league of 8 conferences with 8-10 teams each. The top half of the teams - as determined within each conference - will make a playoff in football. Eliminate the conference championships and just go with the playoff format or use the conference championships to determine top seeds.

As for basketball and other sports, it becomes a bit of a problem because there is more parity. However, as you well know from your tenure, when pointy headed academics do something, it's usually screwed up!

As for the ACC, they had a COACH at UNC who was paying players. Sure he was fired, but does that mean they should have suspended the whole program? If you extrapolate Swofford's words then that has to be the logical conclusion.

 

[BamaMoon]

What should happen is what I've been arguing for for over 20 years...the BCS conferences (comprising of between 65-75 schools) should break away from the insaneness of the NCAA. These schools are funding the whole criminal enterprise that siphons funds from them to the William & Mary's of the world. They should form a super league of 8 conferences with 8-10 teams each. The top half of the teams - as determined within each conference - will make a playoff in football. Eliminate the conference championships and just go with the playoff format or use the conference championships to determine top seeds.

.

Was thinking the very same thing the other day -- about creating another "Division" of the upper crust. Your point about basketball (and other sports) is a legitimate concern, but if football pays for everything, as I understand it, the other sports would just have to accept that the "one who does the paying does the saying" and deal with it.

Those 8 superconferences would make for an ideal playoff and it would give us 2 or 3 more great games to watch when Bama made it into the playoff.

I'd mourn the loss of the better bowl games, but I'm becoming a fan of ideas like this.

 

[RamJamHam]

Guys, there will be no playoff until the question of "who gets the money" gets settled. The NCAA has a monster in the basketball tourney, and I would have to think that the college presidents will absolutely not let a football playoff, which has the potential to dwarf the basketball tourney, get away from them without getting a piece of the pie, and a substantial one at that.

We are now routinely playing 14 games, so the old "too much time out of school" argument is slowly being phased out. It's a little ludicrous anyway given the basketball tourney and its demands on the basketball players.

The only way I can see a new "BCS" taking the place of the NCAA is for the college presidents to decide they want a football playoff that they cannot do under the auspices of the NCAA, which doesn't seem very likely at this point. Everybody seems to be OK with the notion that the football program at Alabama should run under the same rules as the nonscholarship football program at William & Mary. Not only that, but that Alabama should be judged by William & Mary, or someone maybe in the Colonial Athletic Association, which I don't think is even close to being a jury of Alabama's peers, if I can borrow that from another area of the law.