Pac 10 Commish won't support Playoff

by Paragon SC on Jul 27, 2007 4:04 PM PDT in USC Football Comment 1 comment

Let the games begin...

This could be a real big deal if the Plus-1 scenario comes to fruition. He Pac 10 has always gone to the beat the beat of their own drum. They held out in regards to the Rose Bowl so this wouldn't surprise me if this gets dicey.

From the SportingNews:

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen, who supports bowl games and opposes a playoff system, told Sporting News Thursday his league will walk away from the BCS if the plus-one playoff model becomes a reality.

This offseason alone, conference commissioners from the SEC, ACC, Big 12 and Big East have said they are intrigued by the plus-one model -- which would provide a championship game between the two highest-ranked teams after the bowl games -- and might be open to implementing such a plan when the new television contract is negotiated sometime over the next year.

The model, however, will go nowhere without Pac-10 and Big Ten support.

I'm not sure if the Pac 10 would entertain the proposal even if the cards were in their favor. I'm not really in favor of a playoff but as I said earlier it really is out of my control.

CFR had a post a while back (in regards to eaxpansion) discussing why the Pac 10 is so adamant on its reluctance to change.

1)If the Pac-10 wanted to expand, it would have done so long ago.

It hasn't done so because it is primarily an academic and non-football athletic conference. It bills itself the "Conference of Champions" and for good reason. The bulk of its non-football athletic teams are competing for athletic championships. The three all-time leaders in NCAA overall team titles are UCLA, USC and Stanford and they're ahead of anyone else by a mile.

[...] 3)The Pac-10 is stubborn. It is the only major conference not to speak up with plans for its own television network when a flurry of those announcements went out last week. It has held to its ten-team unity and I doubt it sees any compelling reason not to. Remember this is the conference that had to be financially blackmailed, kicking-and-screaming, to join the BCS, thus sacrificing its and the Big Ten's exclusive ties to America's greatest bowl tradition (the Rose Bowl) and the financial windfall it provided for the conference.

I still think that the Pac 10 lives by these thought processes. In the end this all a money grab similar to the conference championship games which have become part of the discussion a la Les Miles. Greed may be good, as Gordon Gekko would say, but not for everyone.

This is sure to be a real battle when it comes up in the future.

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