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Swofford: BCS would withstand legal testing
AP File Photo
John Swofford says the BCS provided Utah a platform it might otherwise not have had.
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Published: January 9, 2009
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.
Bowl Championship Series officials believe they're prepared to fend off any legal challenges.
With the Utah attorney general investigating the bowl system for a possible antitrust violation, John Swofford, the commissioner of the ACC and coordinator of the BCS, said that the BCS has carefully considered the legality of its format.
"We've attempted to make every effort to make certain that any structure of the BCS is within the antitrust laws. Our legal people are comfortable that the BCS structure is," Swofford said yesterday during a Football Writers of American Association meeting. "Obviously if there are any aspects of it that we should be doing differently, we would adjust that."
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff announced his investigation Tuesday. Utah (13-0) was the only unbeaten team in major-college football yet was left out of the BCS title game, which matched Florida and Oklahoma, teams with one loss each.
"We're not out there trying to test the antitrust laws of the United States of America," Swofford said.
Swofford said again that the majority of university presidents and athletics directors oppose an expansive NFL-style playoff for major-college football.
Last summer, the BCS considered a proposal by Commissioner Mike Slive of the Southeastern Conference to change to a four-team playoff called the plus-one model. The format would match the top four teams at the end of the regular season in two of the major bowls, and the winners would play in the national-title game.
That proposal was shot down. Swofford said it's unlikely that the plus-one model will be considered again any time soon.
Utah finished its season last week with a 28-17 victory over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Although the Utes still have a slim chance of being voted No. 1 in the final AP Top 25, the BCS national-championship trophy and No. 1 spot in the final USA Today coaches' poll goes to Florida-Oklahoma winner.
"The BCS provided a platform for Utah to show the nation what a terrific football team they had this year." Swofford said. "Preceding the BCS, I don't know if that platform would have been there."
The BCS expanded to five games three seasons ago and changed its qualification standards to allow better access to teams from the five conferences without automatic bids, such as Utah of the Mountain West Conference.
"The non-AQ conferences have greater access to the top-level bowls than ever in history because of the BCS," Swofford said.
The BCS recently signed a four-year, $125 million deal with ESPN to televise the BCS national championship game, and the Orange, Fiesta and Sugar bowls, starting in January 2011 and running through the 2014 bowls. The current deal with Fox will run out after next season. The Rose Bowl has a separate TV deal with ABC that runs through January 2014.
ESPN purchased the rights to the current BCS format.
Although the network would not stand in the way of a format change, Burke Magnus, ESPN's senior vice president for college-sports programming, said it had no intention of pushing the BCS toward the mini-playoff system: "We don't think it's our role to influence the format."
The six conferences with an automatic bid each to the BCS are the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10 and ACC.
The BCS has just completed the first year of a four-year cycle, in which it evaluates the conferences to determine which will receive automatic bids. The formula used takes into account the ranking of the best team in the conference, the number of top-25 teams and rankings of all teams in the conference.
Swofford said it is possible the BCS could expand the number of conferences with automatic bids in 2012. He also said that the bowl partners prefer to continue the double-hosting format in which the championship game rotates among sites.
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