Rose Bowl as a playoff quarterfinal? Not!
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Cry if you want, Mountain West Conference, but college football’s Bowl Championship Series isn’t going away anytime soon.
That seemed to be the message from the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee after a teleconference this week. It scuttled the Mountain West’s proposal for an eight-team playoff, with committee Chairman David Frohnmayer issuing a statement afterward that said there was ‘no overall support’ for the plan outside the MWC.
Frohnmayer, the outgoing University of Oregon president, said this latest attempt at changing college football’s postseason carried familiar elements of proposals -- even President Obama wants a playoff -- that failed in the past.
‘In the last six years, I’ve read pundits, heard the pronouncements of broadcasters and collected several cubic feet of e-mail printouts from advocates of an NFL-style playoff system,’ he said in his statement. ‘Even those that go beyond sound bite certitude share two intertwined and fatal deficiencies: they disrespect our academic calendars and they utterly lack a business plan.’
Frohnmayer seemed particularly flabbergasted that anyone might think the Orange, Sugar, Fiesta and Rose bowls would be happy to serve as playoff quarterfinals.
He told USA Today: ‘They’d wreck the Rose Bowl, which is the most storied bowl in American history. To say it would be a quarterfinal destination is ridiculous.’
The next BCS national title game will be played Jan. 7, 2010 at the Rose Bowl, six days after the annual Rose Bowl game.
--Mike Hiserman
