Many a hope was raised and headlines made late Friday night when the Seattle Times reported that the athletic directors of the Big Ten and Pac-12 were in favor of a plus-one postseason format for college football.
Leave it to Jim Delany, then, to take a leak all up and down the playoff parade route.
The Big Ten commissioner tapped/slammed the brakes on any talk of his conference supporting a plus-one, telling the Chicago Tribune’s Teddy Greenstein that the Times’ report is simply not a reflection of reality when it comes to his league.
“To describe the ADs as supportive, I would call that erroneous,” Delany said.
“I’m not going to go into the guts of the meeting and where our ADs are or are not. I can just tell you they are happy with the Rose Bowl and happy with the status quo.”
In the Seattle newspaper’s report, the athletic directors of both conferences had reached a non-binding consensus favoring the plus-one format, a seeded mini-playoff that would add a fifth BcS game and turn two BcS bowls into “play-in” games involving the top four teams in (presumably) the BcS rankings. The winner of those two BcS bowls would then move on to the BcS title game, hence the “plus-one” nomenclature. Under the proposal that was reportedly met with consensus approval, the Rose Bowl would not be involved in those semifinal games, thus preserving the annual Big Ten-Pac-12 matchup.
The Rose Bowl would, however, have played host to the title game every five years. Of course, given the fact that Delany has put the official kibosh on such talk, it’s a moot point. At least for now.
In more immediate news involving the national landscape of college football, Delany says his conference will not be affected if/when the SEC expands beyond its current 12-team membership.
“No, we’re about as comfortable as we can be with where we are,” Delany told the Tribune. “We’ve said we will continue to monitor the landscape, but we have closed down active expansion. Every period you look at it, but we don’t expect anything the SEC does to affect us.”
Naturally, it’s quite easy for Delany to say any Big Ten expansion plans are currently inactive as nothing has actually changed conference-wise. The real litmus test for Delany and his conference will be how long they stay inactive once the SEC, the Big Ten’s stiffest competition both on the field and, especially, in the bank vaults, moves to 14 members. Or, quite possibly, 16.
We’re guessing such a scenario would lead to Delany and the Big Ten quickly flipping the switch to “active”.