Title game will stand on its own next season
Championship will come after four BCS bowls
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Tim May
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
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Coming off the most successful postseason in their eight-year history, Bowl Championship Series officials are poised to take a bigger, bolder step next season. For the first time, college football’s national championship game will not be a bowl.
On Jan. 8, 2007, what tentatively has been named the BCS National Championship Game will be played in new Cardinals Stadium in suburban Phoenix. It will be staged by the same people who oversee the Fiesta Bowl.
"But it will not be the Fiesta Bowl; it will not be a bowl in many of the same ways you’ve come to know a bowl," Fiesta chairman Mike Allen said. "It will be a game all its own. We, of course, think it’s going to be very exciting to be a part of, but it’s also going to be different for all of us."
All that most fans need to know is that next season there will be 10 spots up for grabs in BCS games, compared to eight the past eight years. The Rose, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar bowls will still be four of those games, and once every four years each will "double host" the national championship game, starting with the Fiesta.
BCS officials opted to do it this way for two reasons: to show loyalty to the bowls that made the BCS possible in the first place, and to use the strengths of those bowls’ organizing committees to help stage the title game.
But is it practical putting on two major postseason games in a span of a week?
"I don’t have a good feel for that, and I think we’ve got to experience it before we answer that question," Notre Dame athletics director Kevin White said.
White is a member of the BCS committee, and he was in the room last year when the decision on the standalone title game was made.
"I think based on all the competing forces, this is the best mechanism we could create at this particular moment," White said. "I’m anxious to see how it plays out."
The Fiesta Bowl was eager to be a part of it, said John Junker, the bowl’s executive director. Twice before, the Fiesta took a leap of faith on behalf of a major college football championship — staging the 1987 pre-BCS battle between Penn State and Miami, and then the first BCS title game after the 1998 season — and both times the bowl popped up bobbing high in the water.
So it was no surprise to see Junker hold up an arm when BCS officials sought a high diver for the new "double host" format. Besides, they’ve been playing host to two bowl games for several years, putting on the Insight Bowl in downtown Phoenix roughly a week before the Fiesta.
"The BCS folks came to us the day they were making the decision and asked, ‘Can you do three?’ " Junker said. "I told them our folks would love to do it. It’s Ernie Banks, plus one."
The championship game will fall out of what has come to be known as the traditional bowl week — the 10 days or so in the Christmas and New Year’s Day window. Fox Sports is gambling on it being a success. The network agreed to pay $320 million over four years for the rights to the title game, along with the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls. The Rose Bowl will continue with ABC.
Whether the double-hosting will end up diluting the four BCS bowls is a concern, White said, but in making the decision "we distilled it down to this model and everybody has bought into this model, and we’re going to make it be as good as it can be."
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