"Plus-one" plan for BCS now six feet under
CHRIS DUFRESNE / ON COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Defeat of the four-team playoff format effectively eliminates chance of a college football playoff any sooner than 2014.
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- The "plus-one" playoff proposal is dead. Gee, what a shock.
The decision by Bowl Championship Series commissioners on Wednesday likely put an end to any playoff possibility in college football until 2014.
This was as predictable as Duke losing a football game.
The Pac-10 and Big Ten conferences have long opposed the format, proposed and presented by Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive.
The Pac-10 and Big Ten were not going to budge, and unanimous consent was required by the commissioners to make any change.
It turns out the Pac-10 and Big Ten weren't alone. Two other conferences, the Big 12 and Big East, and Notre Dame were not ready to move forward.
"Looked like a playoff, smelled like a playoff," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said.
Give the commissioners credit for ending the plus-one idea now and not dragging the discussion into the summer with the same ultimate conclusion.
Plus-one was a modified playoff, pitting the top four teams in the BCS standings in a mine-tournament. But the detractors thought it would lead to more.
"There was a strong sense in the room of the slippery slop view," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said, "that there had never been a collegiate or professional playoff that stopped at four teams."
Slive put the proposal on the table on behalf of the SEC, still stinging over undefeated Auburn in 2004 being left out of the title-game mix.
"I can't say I was totally surprised," Slive said of the decision.
The best hope for playoff proponents -- and it's a longshot -- is that this week was the start of discussions, not the end.
The soonest any playoff can be implemented now, it seems, is 2014.
If Fox renegotiates a four-year extension, starting with the 2010 season, the deal will link with ABC's separate deal with the Rose Bowl.
That gives the BCS four years to build consensus entering contract negotiations in 2011.
The Pac-10 and Big Ten, by then, might have softened their staunch anti-playoff stances. Maybe a new plan will come along that everyone likes.
But don't count on it.
"You never say never," Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said. "But I can't conceive of what could be proposed that hasn't been proposed."
The BCS isn't ready to change yet, mostly because it doesn't have to.
It takes cataclysm to get these folks moving.
