PASADENA, Calif.8212;Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson made his league’s case for sweeping changes to the Bowl Championship Series, including a move to an eight-team playoff, in a 90-minute presentation to other conference leaders Tuesday at the BCS meetings.
Also, BCS coordinator John Swofford dismissed the looming antitrust lawsuit from Utah’s attorney general as having “no impact” on how the MWC’s proposal will be considered.
“I’m not sure it does affect the process,” Swofford said.
The MWC’s proposal comes after a season in which Utah, the Mountain West champion, was the only undefeated team in FBS college football, but did not get a chance to play for the national title.
“We want it performance-based,” Thompson said of the BCS.
The 11 major college football conference commissioners will take the MWC proposal to their year-end league meetings and return June 15 to 19 in Colorado Springs, Colo., with their responses.
It’s unlikely that the MWC’s proposal will bring about any major changes to the BCS format.
Swofford downplayed the antitrust threat.
“The antitrust aspects were addressed before the BCS went into effect,” he said, and nothing has changed in the 12 years since then.
Swofford said there was no significant legal issue.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff isn’t the only elected official who has taken aim at the BCS in recent months.
President Barack Obama has publicly endorsed a playoff system, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, asked for the BCS to be put on the agenda of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.
Shurtleff, who is in the process of getting facts and assembling legal arguments, said he plans to proceed with the lawsuit in June.
Thompson didn’t see the lawsuit going anywhere, and said he agreed with Swofford that there’s no antitrust issue for the BCS.
What is at issue, he said, and what was addressed in his conference’s proposal, would be a change in the system boosted by the decisive Sugar Bowl win in January by underdog Utah over Alabama, a Southeastern Conference team ranked No. 1 for much of the season.
The MWC’s proposed changes are significant, starting with the criteria for selecting eight teams for a playoff by a 12-person committee that would discard the polls and computers used to determine the BCS standings.
“It’s totally different,” Thompson said, from the process with its six automatic qualifiers from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, PAC-10 and SEC conferences that has “some fundamental flaws.”
Who you beat on the field should be all that matters, Thompson said, citing one “disturbing comment” of a poll voter who admitted after the season to having never seen Utah play.
Swofford said the BCS, which rejected a plus-one format a year ago, would take the MWC format into consideration, despite the BCS’ new $500 million contract with ESPN that goes into effect in 2010.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate to dismiss it out of hand,” Swofford said.
That was good enough for Thompson, who said he could see the five-part proposal considered in whole, or in part.
“It’s an uphill challenge,” Thompson said.