The possibility of a playoff/plus-one isn’t the only postseason change in discussions for major college football. Who has oversight over the current bowl system is under consideration as well.
A CBSSports report by Dennis Dodd and Brett McMurphy details that the NCAA Postseason Task Force is considering transferring the legal responsibility of running college football’s postseason to conference commissioners and their respective leagues.
“The NCAA should discontinue its current detailed licensing system and should embrace and develop a certification system that provides assurance that minimum standards of governance and operation are in place,” said a memo sent out last Friday by NCAA general counsel Donald Remy.
The proposal, reportedly to be considered during an April 26 meeting*, would give conferences the power to moderate the number of bowls and the minimum requirements for eligibility. The idea of raising the win-loss record to 7-5 as a metric for bowl eligibility has gained momentum in the past several months among college football’s bigwigs.
If there were not enough bowl eligible teams, some bowls could be discontinued, or Academic Progress Rate (APR) could play a key role in determining who gets to fill the remaining spots, per Dodd’s report.
The proposal states the NCAA -- mainly president Mark Emmert -- would still have some oversight in approving title sponsors, an idea which has been met with concern by at least one bowl director. It’s also not entirely clear yet if conferences could go out and essentially ink whatever bowl deals they wanted without NCAA approval, although the NCAA applied a three-year moratorium to the addition of any further bowls last year.
Whatever the case, relinquishing control of bowl games to conferences puts the leagues, especially the four major ones (Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC), in the driver’s seat to eventually bring a majority of the postseason profit back to its member institutions.
(*Coincidentally [or not], a report from earlier this morning stated the NCAA’s BOD would likely wait until August to re-evaluate legislation concerning stipends added to the value of an athletic scholarship. The legislation was originally supposed to be looked at this month.)