The playoff gaps: They're getting filled in

The past couple weeks have been pretty slow outside of a steady stream of tweets (mostly) and buried stories (a few) about playoff details that hadn't been finalized when the original announcement was made. Since I have nothing better to do and have a crapload of tabs open in my browser with various things I've been wanting to mention, I'm gonna go ahead and compile them in one place.

Commence data dump about things that will be happening as of 2014.

A name: It "probably" has one. According to incoming Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, the Bowl Championship Series will cease to exist in favor of ... wait for it ... the National Championship Series. Settle down, creative monkeys.

The BCS NCS bowls: There will be six. Two of them will host the semifinals (on a rotating basis, obviously) and the other four will, um, not. As for the participating bowls, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Cotton Bowl (more on that momentarily) and the Orange Bowl will unquestionably be a part of the rotation since they have or will have tie-in deals with all the relevant conferences; that leaves two spots, with the Fiesta almost definitely taking one of those and the Chick-Fil-A probably getting the other since it's been trying to get into the BCS forever and offers (a) a relatively big-money payout and (b) another Southeast-ish location.

As for the Cotton Bowl, word on the interwebs is that it will alternate Champions Bowl hosting duties with the Sugar Bowl; basically, whichever one isn't hosting a semifinal game that year will host that Champions Bowl. That would give both bowls an SEC/Big 12 tie-in and thus a guaranteed spot in the rotation (which Jerry Jones will just buy anyway if the aforementioned deal falls through).

The rotation: It might not be a true rotation since that would be simple and logical. The Rose Bowl and Champions Bowl are both being stupid and trying to get out of hosting a semifinal every four years because of (a) the Rose Bowl's absurd insistence on a Big Ten-Pac 12 game at the expense of everything else, including relevance, and (b) the determination by the SEC and Big 12 that the Champions Bowl will be more valuable -- in terms of TV revenue -- as their property featuring their teams than it will as a semifinal game featuring two random teams with no affiliation. I'm skeptical of that. I'm also not clear exactly how two games rotate between six sites when two of the six sites don't want to be regular hosts; maybe they each get a game every four years instead of every three (if that's even possible mathematically)? That'd be a pretty sweet deal for the other four bowls, especially the Chick-Fil-A one since that isn't even a major bowl right now but might be hosting a national semifinal two out of every five years starting in 2014.

The rankings: They will matter. How much they will matter is not entirely clear. According to Bill Hancock, BCS/NCS bowl selection will be based strictly on rankings, which means the top 12 teams in whatever formula/system is in place will be the teams eligible for the above-named bowls ... maybe. According to the Rose Bowl/Champions Bowl/Orange Bowl contractual arrangements, a conference that loses its champion to the playoff can assign a replacement regardless of ranking. This is an SI.com breakdown of what a hypothetical 2011 playoff would've looked like:

• Dec. 31, 1 p.m. Chick-fil-A: No. 11 Clemson (10-3) vs. No. 13 Baylor (9-3)
• Dec. 31, 4:30 p.m. Cotton: No. 9 South Carolina (10-2) vs. No. 7 Boise State (11-1)
• Dec. 31, 8 p.m. Fiesta: No. 2 Oklahoma State (11-1) vs. No. 3 Alabama (11-1)
• Jan. 1, 1 p.m. Sugar: No. 6 Arkansas (10-2) vs. No. 7 Kansas State (10-2)
• Jan. 1, 5 p.m. Rose: No. 5 Stanford (11-1) vs. No. 8 Wisconsin (11-2)
• Jan. 1, 8:30 p.m. Orange: No. 1 LSU (13-0) vs. No. 4 Oregon (10-2)

Obviously, it's impossible to say exactly how the committee's rankings would have differed from the BCS standings, but I elevated Oklahoma State (from No. 3 to No. 2), Oregon (No. 5 to 4), Wisconsin (No. 10 to No. 8) and Clemson (No. 15 to No. 11) for their conference championships and/or head-to-head wins over similarly ranked foes and downgraded Boise State (from No. 7 to No. 10) for poor strength of schedule. We also don't know if there would be an at-large selection order or a teams-per conference limit (the SEC placed four in this lineup).

Please note Baylor's presence and ranking; that's not a top-12 team, obviously. What that means -- if accurate -- is that the whole AQ/non-AQ thing won't entirely cease to exist. The question is whether there will be any overriding eligibility requirements so that a hypothetical (and by "hypothetical" I mean "2011") Boise State team that goes 11-1 and is ranked seventh or eighth or whatever won't get stuck in the Las Vegas Bowl playing a craptacular Arizona State team so a not-quite-as-craptacular-but-still-pretty-meh Baylor team can have a guaranteed spot just because it's a member of the Big 12. I have to imagine there will be since the alternative allows for the possibility of four contractually mandated selections (if the four playoff teams are from four different major conferences), any/all of which could be from outside the top 12, and thus only three total at-large spots for qualifying teams.

BTW, there are no circumvent-the-rankings exceptions for Notre Dame.

The committee: It probably will be constructed similarly to the NCAA tournament committee, which is comprised of totally unbiased athletic directors and conference presidents. This is a (really long and edited-for-clarity) tweet from Joe Schad:

Possible Football Selection Committeee members could include members of the current BCS AD Advisory Group:

Members: Jeremy Foley (UF), Dan Radakovich (GT), Barry Alvarez (Wisconsin), Joe Castiglione (OU), Pat Haden (USC), Tom Jurich (Louisville), McKinley Boston (NMS), Rick Greenspan (Rice), Dean Lee (ASU), Jim Livengood (UNLV), Mike O'Brien (Toledo)

I don't see how this solves the problems inherent in the coaches poll; the biases and politicking will be an issue unless/until the selection committee is filled with people who aren't directly associated with the schools and conferences involved. I'd prefer national media members from a variety of outlets and areas but won't be getting that no matter how many times I write it. I haven't yet seen an estimate of how many people will be on the committee; for reference, the NCAA tournament committee has 10 members.

As for its specific tasks, there's some ambiguity that exists between the contractual tie-ins and this note from the Big Ten Network:

The selection committee will also play a part in creating matchups for the games at the four sites that do not hold a semifinal in a given year.

I don't think that's entirely accurate. Based on the contracts, the Rose Bowl and Champions Bowl are guaranteed to be filled by their conference affiliates in their non-semifinal years; that means only the two other non-semifinal bowls will have any at-large openings and thus any matchup flexibility. Not that it matters much anyway; to me, bracket flexibility (as in the playoff bracket) is the real benefit of a selection committee.

The schedule: It will be glorious for those of us who inherently associate New Year's-related holidays with football engorgement. There will be three games on December 31, including one semifinal in primetime, and three games on January 1, including the other semifinal in primetime. The Rose Bowl undoubtedly will be the New Year's Day late-afternoon game from now until the end of time (when it's not a semifinal, anyway); the Orange Bowl (locked in via contract) and Champions Bowl (allegedly) will be the other games that day, which leaves the other three -- including the Fiesta -- for New Year's Eve. That gives you a pretty good idea of how the semifinals will rotate since there'll be one each day.

I cannot underestimate the awesomeness of this takeover. Last year was inexplicably awful because New Year's Day fell on a Sunday and thus was ceded to the NFL, which resulted in me arising from a slumber and yelling profanities at the TV when I realized that there were not seven Big Ten-affiliated bowls to flip between while consuming appalling amounts of food. THIS MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

And this is typically great insight from Matt Hinton:

Aside from USC's insurgent victory in the 2004 Rose Bowl, the annual Jan. 1 smorgasbord hasn't featured a game with any sort of national championship implications – insurgent or otherwise – since 1998, when the newly formed BCS began spreading the major bowls thin across the first week of January. Since the addition of the fifth big-money bowl, the BCS Championship Game, in 2006-07, the winner-take-all, 1 vs. 2 showdown for the title has come at least days into the new year, and has naturally tended to blot out the sun for everything else that happens between that date and the end of the regular season. The result has been increasingly pathetic ratings across the board, culminating last year in record lows for both the title game and the Series as a whole.

In summary: Everybody wins.

Conference calls: There will be many, and they will decide all the other things related to the selection committee's formulation and the new rankings and revenue distribution and blah blah blah. So expect another one of these (probably with fewer categories) at some point in the relatively near future.

A lot of progress was made at this meeting

So ... the conference commissioners met Wednesday in Chicago with the stated goal of making something resembling progress toward a playoff proposal for the Presidential Oversight Committee on June 26. I was legitimately excited for some updates. I got this instead (this is from AP but is substantially the same as what was produced by every other news outlet covering the thing):

The conference commissioners who have been working on a four-team playoff to determine college football's national champion plan to present the BCS presidential oversight committee multiple formats from which to choose.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said the university presidents will "have options -- plural" to consider when they meet in two weeks.

Oh. Awesome ... and by "awesome" I obviously mean "not at all awesome."

WTF happened? The explanatory detail provided thus far has been hilariously lacking (that's because of the commissioners, not the media). For some reason, nobody's saying anything about anything except in the most vague ways.

The only useful information I've been able to find was given off the record to CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd:

"If the Big Ten and Pac-12 presidents had embraced the four-team playoff, then I think there would have been a place where everyone was on the same page, and then ready to fill in all the gaps," the source said.

"The Pac-12 is still dug in on some things that other people aren't," said one commissioner.

AAARRRRRGHGHGH!!! In gif form:

My understanding throughout the playoff-discussion process (and I believe this was the goal) was that the commissioners would present an agreed-upon plan and that approval of said plan would be a formality since, like, everybody had already agreed to it. But that quote about having "plural" options is horrifying because ... I mean ... "plural" does not imply any sort of consensus.

The way I see it, there are basically two potential here-are-the-proposals scenarios. The first: The commissioners have (or will have) a mostly finalized four-team concept and will be pitching that along with a dollar menu of accompanying options, which means punting to the presidents on the apparently divisive issues of participants (top four or something with a bias for conference champs) and selection format (committee or revised ranking system). The second: The commissioners have only a majority agreement and will put everything -- including a plus-one -- on the table and let the presidents negotiate their own adventure.

The apparent reality:

"They'll (the presidents) look at the four-team playoff and look at the plus-one," said another source. 

I'd be relatively OK with the first scenario since it'd limit the number and scale of talking points. I'm not at all OK with the reality scenario for the opposite reason: I do not want the format discussion reopened at the presidential level. There was a four-team consensus among the commissioners two freakin' months ago; that shouldn't be thrown out in deference to some other group of guys with even larger egos and even more expertise in politicking just because Jim Delany and Larry Scott and possibly a few Big Ten presidents got all pouty about the Rose Bowl (I'm assuming that's the issue based on the above-quoted comments about the Big Ten and Pac-12).

Here's the complete list of Oversight Committee dudes who are now relevant to the discussion:

Scott Cowen, Tulane
Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame
Bernie Machen, Florida
Max Nikias. USC
Duane Nellis, Idaho
Harvey Perlman, Nebraska
John G. Peters, Northern Illinois
Bill Powers, Texas
James Ramsey, Louisville
Charles W. Steger, Virginia Tech (chairman)
Gary Ransdell, Western Kentucky
John Welty, Fresno State

It's not hard to envision a scenario in which Harvey Perlman demands a plus-one, John Jenkins demands God's plan for a four-best-teams playoff, Bill Powers demands ALL OF THE MONEY for Texas and literally nothing gets accomplished. It's also not hard to envision a scenario in which everybody except Harvey Perlman decides that a plus-one is stupid, at which point all that's left to decide is the stuff that's left to decide now (which would still be divisive but not nearly as complicated as the format).

It's unclear exactly how the Oversight Committee works since I can't find any details about their procedures (I guess that's not surprising since they've never really been involved in the process before as anything other than a notary). A 12-member consensus about anything seems wildly unlikely but might be required, in which case I would lower my expectations for a timely resolution incrementally; they'd be on the floor if not for the deadline-type thing established by the BCS TV contract, which expires after next year and will be renegotiated this fall based on whatever postseason format will be in place in 2014 (that's the reasoning for the hypothetical 2014 playoff implementation). A projected playoff-based revenue increase of somewhere around 1,000 percent (!!!) oughta get some people motivated, yes?

My preference that it not come to that is irrelevant; it's probably gonna come to that. The "probably" qualifier is included only because the commissioners have a final meeting scheduled for next Wednesday that could produce some additional concessions/sacrifices and thus something resembling a consensus recommendation. The statistical chance of that happening: 0.04 percent (woo made-up stats). The likelihood of having something finalized by the Oversight Committee on June 26 is the same.

I suppose it doesn't really matter whether this gets decided in June or October, but it's so depressing that this is where things stand two months after ESPN was reporting that "the biggest issue has been settled" and John Swofford was saying that "it's great to get to a point where there seems to be a general consensus that a four-team, three-game playoff is the best route to go." Derp.

This comment from Bill Hancock would seem to be a more accurate assessment:

"It could be a while before the future of the game is known."

That's pretty much all I can write about a couple of vague post-meeting comments that generated 600 words, no real analysis and news-rail placement from ESPN. The tl;dr summary: Taking this to the presidents is bad, with the degree of "bad" to be determined by exactly how defined the commissioners' proposals turn out to be and how divided the presidents are on the relevant issues. Expect nothing until the fall; TV will save us.

Because it's all about the playoff thing

Hokay, so ...


... zee playoff thing. The guys who would know have been saying stuff about it for most of the past week, a week that was largely spent bouncing ideas off each other and trying to figure out exactly how much Centrum Silver they'll be able to buy with the pile of cash they'll be swimming in starting in 2014. Most of that stuff was probably meaningless posturing; that won't stop me from reading too much into it here.

Let's start with this: There will be a four-team playoff. There is no other plausible option on the table at this point since Bill Hancock has actually said that "the status quo is off the table" and there has been zero support for anything larger than a four-team bracket. There will be four seeded teams in a bracket that features semifinals one week and a national championship game a week or two later.

There are two not-insignificant takeaways from the above paragraph. The first is that this playoff thing will not be a plus-one featuring a vote/selection after the bowl games but will actually be a playoff, which makes sense since trying to pick the two best teams after the bowl games often wouldn't be any easier than picking the two best teams after the regular season. The second is that Jim Delany's insistence that everybody get off the Rose Bowl's lawn has been thoroughly disregarded/discarded. I will now refer back to this quote from SEC commissioner Mike Slive:

A four-team playoff proposal that would ensure a Big Ten/Pac-12 Rose Bowl semifinal pairing ... prompted a smile from Slive.

"It's not one of my favorites," he said. "What we're trying to do is simplify in many ways. I don't think that adds to the simplification of the postseason." 

BOOM SLIVE'D. It's a four-team playoff, not a maybe-five-team-or-six-team-depending-on-the-conference-affiliation playoff.

Anyway, what's still a matter of debate is pretty much everything else. To be more specific: (a) the sites for the semifinal games, (b) the involvement of the bowls -- which is directly related to aforementioned site issue -- and (c) the manner of selecting the four participating teams.

This is where things stand, according to Stewart Mandel: 

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of last week's discussions in South Florida have confirmed to SI.com that the new favored proposal for a four-team playoff within the bowl system would place the two semifinal games at the traditional anchor bowls of the No. 1 and 2 teams' conferences. For example, No. 1 Alabama of the SEC would host the No. 4 team in the Sugar Bowl, while No. 2 USC of the Pac-12 would host the No. 3 team in the Rose Bowl.

Bolded for emphasis. It is probably not a coincidence that this became the "favored" proposal right after Jim Delany got done being laughed at since it allows a top-two Big Ten or Pac-12 team to host its semifinal at the Rose Bowl, which makes Delany happy and thus makes everyone else happy since his whining will be minimized. I'm not sure (and haven't seen any explanation of) what would happen if a Big Ten team and a Pac-12 team finished first and second; that's probably low on the risk of concerns but is worth thinking about.

There are apparently two potential alternatives: a predetermined rotation for the semifinals among the current BCS sites -- the way the championship site is rotated now -- and (gasp) using college football stadiums to host college football games!

Mandel's source says the rotation thing is "not as likely" to be implemented because of the less-than-ideal scenarios that feature USC playing LSU at a hypothetically neutral-site game in the Sugar Bowl while the Rose Bowl hosts a Virginia Tech-Oklahoma game nobody really wants to go to. I'm not even sure how to say this: That ... like ... actually makes sense (ducking lightning bolts).

As for the on-campus option that had supposedly been eliminated a couple weeks ago ...

Contrary to some reports, on-campus sites remain "very much alive," according to two sources. One said the commissioners left the meetings split about "60-40" in favor of using bowl sites.

... that's not exactly eliminated but doesn't sound super promising either. It's pretty easy to figure out the 60-40 split: Jim Delany and whoever is now representing the Big East are on one side and everybody else is on the other. There's little reason for anybody in the SEC/Pac-12/Big 12/ACC to give up what basically amounts to a home crowd at every prominent "neutral" site in exchange for the possibility of playing in Ann Arbor/Columbus/Madison/Lincoln/wherever in early January; unfortunately for people who want on-campus playoff games (me among them), that's a numerical advantage that probably isn't overcome-able. But I'll keep hoping.

Speaking of Delany, his new pet project is just as stupid as his last one. This is from CBS Sports' Brett McMurphy:

Delany, who met with CBSSports.com and other reporters on Wednesday in Chicago, said one proposal being considered is the conference-champion-only model but that the conference champion would have to be ranked among the top six teams in the country to qualify.

If a conference champion was among the top six in the rankings, it would automatically qualify for the four-team playoff. The top four ranked conference champions among the top six would qualify, and if less than four conference champions were among the top six teams then the remaining spots would be filled by the highest-ranked non-conference champions or an independent (Notre Dame, BYU, Army or Navy).

Quick side note: I like how Army and Navy are included for journalistic fairness lol.

Anyway, the stupidity: There's a lot of it here. I understand maximizing the importance of the regular season and the conference championships and whatnot but don't understand the desire to create a four-team playoff and not just take the TOP FOUR TEAMS. Why does it need to be so complicated?

I can't find the story now but saw a breakdown showing that a top-four team would have been left out under this playoff scenario seven times in the BCS era. That's seven times in 15 years! It defeats the purpose of having a playoff if it includes a relatively arbitrary selection of participants and doesn't necessarily represent the teams deserving of being in said playoff.

Here's a great example (and not because of the team that would've gotten screwed) from Tony Barnhart:

... my personal favorite is 2006: No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Florida, No. 5 USC, and No. 6 Louisville are in. No. 3 Michigan (11-1 with a 42-39 loss to Ohio State) and No. 4 LSU (losses to No. 3 Auburn and No. 2 Florida) are out. So Michigan, which was No. 2 but idle on Championship Saturday and got leapfrogged by Florida by .0101 in the final BCS Standings, doesn't get in. But Bobby Petrino's Big East champions, whose best non-conference win was over a 7-6 Miami team, gets to be in the Final Four? 

Yup. No further discussion needed, although it's also noted that a hypothetical conference-champions-only playoff last year would've been one fewer Wisconsin loss from featuring No. 1 LSU, No. 3 Oklahoma State, No. 5 Oregon and No. 6 Wisconsin and leaving out No. 2 Alabama and No. 4 Stanford, which ... ummm ... no. I like my four teams to be the best four teams plzkthx.

Fortunately for me and the glorious awesomeness of common sense, it appears that I'm not alone:

While there's been considerable public sentiment toward limiting the field to conference champions, one source said most commissioners are leaning toward an unrestricted top four, which figures to be more appealing to television partners. "One through four is more easily understandable," said ACC commissioner John Swofford.

Thank the Lord; for once, television contracts might actually produce something beneficial to the general viewership. BTW, I'm way beyond skeptical that there's "considerable public sentiment toward limiting the field to conference champions." I'd say it's the opposite based on the (coherent) things I've read and all the stuff I just wrote.

Swofford gets it:

"I'm a big believer in conference championships, and that resonates with me," said Swofford. "But if you're selling a four-team playoff, and it's not 1-2-3-4, then the credibility of the system is undermined."  

There it is. A four-team playoff that leaves out the team at No. 3 or (AAHHH) No. 2 will almost immediately cease to exist in whatever form it's in; might as well just cut the inevitable poopstorm out of the process and play it straight from the beginning. FWIW, I'm guessing that the threat of disaster will be a sufficient deterrent. I also have little confidence in the conference commissioners to do things that aren't necessarily in their best interests. We'll see.

As for the selection process -- which everyone will hate regardless of the details -- there's apparently been a lot less progress/agreement, although that'd seem to be a far less divisive issue than the sites/bowls/bids/revenue stuff and therefore shouldn't be all that difficult to get figured out. Relevant quote:

"The whole topic of selection and who would get in is something that we've really parked for now," said Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. "We realize that's going to require a whole lot more debate and study."

I'm not sure exactly what aspect requires much debate or study; the options are (a) a poll/formula and (b) a selection committee. Back to Mandel:

The commissioners are a ways aaway from deciding whether to use a revised BCS formula, a selection committee or some combination of both.

If they do employ a formula, sources said there's a near-universal desire to emphasize strength of schedule. One source said the commissioners also aren't keen on preseason polls, which could signal an end to using the USA Today Coaches' Poll.

The coaches poll should absolutely, positively, unequivocally play no part in the process. The biases are laughably obvious and should be removed from the equation before somebody gets totally hosed because Steve Spurrier still loves Duke. The Harris Poll is also stupid since it's a really odd collection of people loosely affiliated with college sports, and seeing as how removing both of those polls leaves computers and nothing else, I'm obviously on board with a selection committee made up of an assortment of people, all from different conferences. Biases will still exist (as they will in any scenario outside of straight math) but will be minimized by the existence of several other voices and therefore shouldn't really be a factor, or at least not enough of a factor to outweigh the benefit of having logic and expertise involved in the decision rather than just the skewed BCS numbers. To be clear, I'm a fan of numbers but don't particularly trust numbers that aren't drawn from a full set of data; in the case of the BCS, that means things like margin of victory and schedule-adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency.

One other (potential) committee benefit I haven't seen mentioned anywhere: bracket flexibility. In a scenario in which No. 4 has already lost to No. 1 but appears to be of near-identical quality to No. 2 and No. 3, why not flip the third- and fourth-ranked teams to (a) avoid a rematch and (b) provide an extra data point?

Maybe an example would make more sense; I'll use last year for simplistic purposes. Let's say Alabama finishes No. 4 rather than No. 2 (don't worry about the how and why), which means Oklahoma State is No. 2 and Stanford is No. 3. If there's some uncertainty as to whether LSU and Alabama are the two best teams -- and there was -- what's the benefit of having them play each other in a semifinal game? What I want is a level of flexibility that would allow Alabama to move into the other bracket to play Oklahoma State (yay) and eliminate the possibility of a semifinal rematch that'd determine basically nothing in regards to the national title. Only a committee would provide that, obviously. Whether that's something being taken into consideration is totally unknown.

FYI, the commissioners' meetings ended last week (as did John Marinatto's paychecks), which means the stories for the next month or so will be limited to crap like this:

Speaking as a member of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee, Nebraska chancellor Harvey Perlman told ESPN.com Thursday that his committee is not on board with the BCS commissioners' recommendation to move forward with a four-team playoff -- and doesn't sound ready to be persuaded otherwise.

"I can't figure out a good reason to have a playoff to start with," he said.

Ugh. That dude is hilariously out of touch (and doesn't have nearly as much power as he thinks he does if he can't stop Jim Delany from negotiating something he apparently doesn't want while working on behalf of his own conference).

Anyway, I said "the next month or so" because there is (gasp) a target date:

Delany also said he's optimistic that when the commissioners meet June 20 in Chicago they will have the playoff model finalized to present to the Presidential Oversight Committee for approval.

Commence the countdown at 43 days.

Catching up has a ginormous pile of money

Boise makes it official: Some conference-affiliation ambiguity was cleared up Saturday night when Boise officially withdrew from the Mountain West about three hours before a deadline to do so without incurring a $5 million withdrawal penalty. Translation: Boise will be a member of the Big East starting in 2013.

The reason for said ambiguity: Boise's nonrevenue sports, which were adrift in the wind pending the WAC's extinction. My understanding was that the Big West had offered a home for those sports, just as it did for San Diego State; that apparently wasn't a for-sure offer but a "why don't you apply and see what happens" offer. The Big West will be comprised entirely of California schools and Hawaii, and some of the California schools weren't super thrilled about the idea of adding a lengthy trip to Boise. It sounds like that'll get resolved, though:

The school announced Sunday that it was in ongoing discussions with the Big West to make that conference the home for the majority of its other sports. The Big West will hold a meeting of its presidents before the upcoming academic year to make a decision on Boise State's membership in the conference beginning July 1, 2013.

A Big East source told ESPN.com that Boise State will receive financial help to pay the Big West for travel costs. San Diego State has been lobbying Big West schools to invite Boise State, as well, since the Aztecs need and want a Western partner for their football presence in the Big East.

It should be noted that the Big East was so desperate to get Boise that it agreed to indirectly pay the Big West for its members' nonrevenue-sports travel costs to get to Idaho. Whatever. I guess getting Boise was pretty much a necessity in order to maintain the illusion of being a major-ish conference. And as for Boise, the alternative was sticking it out in the Mountain West and playing a blah schedule that would've made getting in the playoffs about as likely as getting in the BCS championship game in the current system.

So ... as of 2015, the Big East will be complete and consist of the following football programs: Boise State, San Diego State, Temple, Memphis, Central Florida, Houston, SMU, Rutgers, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Louisville, South Florida and Navy. Woo.

The Orange Bowl really wants to be relevant: The ACC champion will play in the Orange Bowl from now until a long time from now:

The Discover Orange Bowl will be played on New Year's Day at 1 p.m. ET and annually feature a team from the Atlantic Coast Conference beginning after 2014, results of a 12-year agreement announced Tuesday by the ACC and the bowl's committee.

The game will feature the champion of the ACC, unless that team is chosen to play in the newly announced four-team playoffs. In that case, a replacement team from the ACC would play in the Orange Bowl. The ACC team playing in the Orange Bowl is likely to face a highly seeded at-large team in the annual game, sources told ESPN's Joe Schad.

The announcement wasn't at all surprising but was still noteworthy since there was some uncertainty about whether the Orange Bowl would be one of the bowls included in the future six-bowl BCS rotation. Interestingly, the ACC took advantage of that uncertainty by taking over the game's TV rights ...

Sources told Schad that the ACC will negotiate and sell the Orange Bowl TV rights and plans to keep at least 50 percent of the revenue. Whatever network gets the Orange Bowl will get to broadcast it, even when it's a semifinal.

... although I'm a little unclear as to exactly how that works within the overall postseason-rights package. Regardless, the Orange Bowl previously had those rights and now doesn't, which means the bowl committee is about to get squeezed out of a big chunk of revenue (last year's payout to the ACC was about $22 million). That continues a trend started by the Big 12 and SEC via the Champions Bowl, which will be run by the conferences rather than a bowl committee and thus eliminate the typical ticket guarantees and hotel requirements and various other needless expenses that usually make a bowl trip a maybe-break-even-if-you're-lucky venture. This probably goes without saying, but anything that removes power/money from the bowl-committee leeches and redistributes it to the schools/conferences is a good thing (especially in the case of the somewhat-tenuously-held-together ACC).

Also of note: The ACC will reportedly be playing an at-large team rather than a probably uninspiring Big East champ, as has been the case since 1998. I'm gonna assume that "at-large team" is the approved phrasing for "Notre Dame," which hasn't finished in the top 10 since about 1836 but still draws eyeballs and, most importantly, doesn't have a tie-in deal with any of the bowls that will definitely be a part of the New Postseason Order. All things considered, just having the option to take a qualified Notre Dame team is probably worth more in TV negotiations than any deal that could've been put together for a second- or third-place team from the SEC/Big Ten/Big 12/Pac-12.

No word yet on exactly what happens with the Big East champ; expect a deal with one of the better bowls that ends up getting left out of the BCS rotation (maybe the Liberty Bowl or whatever the Champs Sports Bowl is becoming).

So much money: The playoff thing will produce money. A lot of it. Like a ridiculous, incomprehensible amount of it.

This is from The Sporting News:

A new four-team, three-game playoff could be sold to television for as much as $5 billion over a 10-year deal, a BCS source close to the process told Sporting News.

The 2011 BCS contract paid out $174 million, and the newly restructured postseason would nearly triple that number.

Great googly moogly. Exactly how that gets split up is yet to be determined; the one certainty is that it'll be disproportionately distributed to the five power conferences before everybody else gets a split of the leftovers.

CBS Sports has a piece on an actual proposal featuring a distribution model based on each conference's number of top-25 finishes in the BCS era (that's based on current conference alignment, obviously). The breakdown:

1. SEC 1,054
2. Big Ten 860
3. Big 12 816
4. ACC 673
5. Pac-12 671
6. Big East 240
7. Notre Dame 73
8. C-USA 49
9. MWC 48
10. BYU 45
11. MAC 21
T12. Sun Belt 0
T12. WAC 0

A couple observations: (a) lol at the bottom of that list and (b) there's obviously a massive chasm on either side of the Big East. As for what that means:

One unknown isn't whether the Big East will get an equal share as the other AQ conferences -- the Big East won't -- but rather will the Big East get the same share of the other former non-AQ conferences, or somewhere in the middle between the former-AQ and non-AQ leagues

"It's possible the 'Big Five' get treated in one manner, the Big East in another manner, and the remaining conferences in another manner," a commissioner said.

Makes sense.

BTW, the above-cited list is a data-fied encapsulation of the distribution of on-field power in the FBS. Consider this: The meh future version of the Big East owns almost twice as many top-25 finishes in the BCS era as Conference USA, the Mountain West, the MAC, the Sun Belt and the WAC combined. That's ... like ... wow/

That must have been a for-real cut: Jordan Hall has a serious owie:

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Jordan Hall, No. 1 on Ohio State's depth chart at running back, will be out for about 10 weeks after undergoing surgery on Friday for a cut on the bottom of his right foot.

Hall, with 817 career rushing yards, is a senior who first-year coach Urban Meyer had singled out as one of the team's top potential playmakers.

He was walking in grass outside his residence in Columbus when he cut his foot.

FYI, Columbus grass is made of beer-bottle shards and used syringes and whatnot.

Hall is/was supposed to be the starter with Boom Herron gone and the other options on the roster being bigger guys who aren't particularly well suited to being the feature back in that offense, which makes this update all the more problematic:

Ohio State believes the foot injury suffered by running back Jordan Hall is "significant" and the best-case scenario is he will return by Week 3, a source told ESPN's Joe Schad.

The Buckeyes are prepared for him to take a medical redshirt if necessary, the source said.

I see. A relatively brief absence would definitely be manageable; Ohio State opens with an underwhelming nonconference schedule that features Miami (Ohio), Central Florida, Cal and UAB. The first two games after that: at Michigan State and home against Nebraska.

If it's a long-term thing, the running game will suffer -- at least to some extent -- because of a general lack of guys with Hall's skill set. Junior Carlos Hyde (106 carries last year) and redshirt sophomore Rod Smith (29 carries) both have some experience but are also 230-plus pounds, and incoming freshmen Warren Ball and Brionte Dunn are both five-stars but without the experience and with the 200-plus-pound frames. Percy Harvin they are not.

It's obviously possible to run a zone-read-type offense with the running back as the power guy and the quarterback as the edge threat (think Michigan the last two years), but Meyer's preference in the past has typically been the opposite, so it'll be interesting to see exactly how he deploys the Braxton Miller/power backs combination.

We still don’t know ye (and might never know ye): Tom Savage was really good as a freshman at Rutgers a couple years ago. He also was kinda crappy at the start of his sophomore year and lost his starting job, at which point he became a vagabond. He transferred to Arizona, sat out last year and then decided he wanted to be closer to home and left school. He tried to transfer back to Rutgers but was turned away after he had a hardship waiver denied by the NCAA, meaning he'll have to sit out next season because of a second transfer, and is now enrolled at Pitt, according to ESPN and the Twitters:

"Moving to Pittsburgh tomorrow... Nervous and excited... next chapter in my life," Savage wrote Saturday on Twitter.

Savage was a freshman All-American after being a legit four-star recruit who picked Rutgers (over Michigan, Penn State, etc.) back when it wasn't cool to pick Rutgers; he has the talent to play pretty much anywhere. Default starter Tino Sunseri will be a senior this year and thus vacating the Pitt starting job next year, which would seem to make Savage the obvious replacement if not for the existence of (relatively) highly touted incoming freshman Chad Voytik and this weirdness:

The Big East has a rule in place that may keep Savage from playing for Pitt in 2013. Conference rules state that once a player has signed and competed at one league school, as Savage did at Rutgers, he cannot compete at another league institution. Pitt has filed a lawsuit to get out of the Big East to join the ACC in time for the 2013 season. If that does not happen and Pitt is stuck in the Big East for 2013, Savage would not be eligible to play.

That would be ... umm ... inconvenient. Pitt has every intention of being in the ACC next year and probably will be, but the possibility exists that Savage will never play another game. He's apparently not that concerned since he has other priorities, the specifics of which haven't ever been made public:

"If I had to make the decision again (to leave Arizona), I’d make the same decision," Savage told the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger in January. "It’s my family. Football is just a game. I had to step up and be a man and be there for my family and help out. It’s a tough decision (by the NCAA), but it’s not the end-all, be-all right now."

Good for him, I guess.

Shayne Skov is still at Stanford: What the headline says:

STANFORD, Calif. -- Linebacker Shayne Skov has been reinstated to the Stanford football team and will serve a one-game suspension this season after he was arrested and jailed earlier this year for driving under the influence.

Skov was nominally suspended after the aforementioned arrest, which was significant because he was unquestionably one of Stanford's better returning players; he actually led the team with 84 tackles and 7.5 sacks two years ago and was an All-Pac-10 first-team pick, then tore his ACL early last season and sat out the rest of the year. He's supposedly healthy now and will be back for all the meaningful games this year (the opener is against San Jose State, which hahaha).

BTW, Stanford's linebacking corps should be pretty good between Skov on the inside and Chase Thomas (a first-team All-Pac-12 guy last year) and Trent Murphy on the outside. So that's nice.

Zeke Pike has some issues: It apparently is possible to get arrested/cited for public intoxication in Alabama:

Auburn freshman quarterback Zeke Pike was arrested for public intoxication in Lee County on Saturday night and later released on a $300 bond, according to multiple reports.

Derp. Pike was a big-time QB recruit whose offer list started going backwards when he committed and started doing stupid things: He got kicked out of a seven-on-seven camp for allegedly throwing the ball at an official, got into a bunch of stupid Twitter wars with Alabama fans, got suspended for his senior-year season opener as punishment for an ejection in the previous year's playoffs, then got suspended for his team's playoff loss for undisclosed reasons (woo maturity!). He then enrolled early at Auburn and looked OK in spring but came out of it third on the depth chart behind presumptive starter Kiehl Frazier, a sophomore, and occasional 2011 starter Clint Moseley, a redshirt junior.

Whatever punishment he gets will be irrelevant in the short term (he'll probably redshirt barring a quarterback disaster reminiscent of last year's) but potentially problematic in the long term; Pike is the best passer on the roster in an offense that's about to become much more pro-style-ish under Scot Loeffler, and even Auburn can handle only so much malfeasance. They'd probably prefer it if he'd stop getting suspended and stuff.

More on drunk quarterbacks: Tommy Rees has been cleared to return to practice, according to Brian Kelly, although his legal status won't be resolved until a hearing on July 17. A let's-all-laugh recap of the charges:

Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees has been charged with four misdemeanors after allegedly raising his knee and knocking the wind out of a police officer following an off-campus house party early Thursday.

The St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office says the 19-year-old Rees was charged with one count of battery, two counts of resisting law enforcement and one count of illegal consumption of alcohol by a minor.

Rees was among about five people who jumped a backyard fence and ran after officers arrived to break up a loud party several blocks from campus about 12:30 a.m. following the last day of Notre Dame's spring semester classes, Trent said.

When an officer caught up with Rees, the 19-year-old raised his knee into the officer and they both fell down, Trent said. Rees continued to resist, so the officer pepper-sprayed the quarterback so officers could handcuff him, Trent said.

Good times.

I still have no idea what to make of Notre Dame's quarterback situation but now have to account for Rees as part of said situation, which wasn't a certainty until a few days ago. I'm skeptical that he beats out Everett Golson since I don't think Kelly wants him to beat out Everett Golson, but he'll probably end up getting some playing time after Golson starts and does a bunch of infuriating, freshman-y things.

ALL UR SEC FLAMEOUTS ARE BELONG TO US: Remember David Oku? He was supposedly awesome when he committed to Tennessee after some hilarious and memorable recruiting indecisiveness but did nothing other than return kicks for a couple years and is now headed to Arkansas State:

JONESBORO, Ark. -- Former Tennessee tailback David Oku has signed with Arkansas State. ASU coach Gus Malzahn announced the signing of the former standout from Midwest City, Okla., on Wednesday.

Sports information director Jerry Scott said Oku will have two years of eligibility remaining and can play immediately because he sat out the 2011 season.

I would like to point out that I once wrote this about Oku and Bryce Brown when they both committed to Tennessee despite having seemingly little interest in committing to Tennessee:

What are the odds one of these guys transfers by his junior year? 99 percent?

BOOM NOSTRADAMUS'D.

Anyway, Oku is a ridonkulously shifty guy who might be able to do some damage in the Sun Belt despite getting buried at Tennessee ... and he might not even be the starter this year since Michael Dyer is already on the roster after putting up 1,200 yards at Auburn last year and has applied for a waiver so he won't have to sit out a season (the NCAA hasn't yet ruled on it). Crazy statement: Arkansas State might have the best backfield in the SEC. Both guys have two years of eligibility left; the question is whether those two years will be spent together or if there'll be one year with just Oku (in 2012) and one year with just Dyer (in 2014) sandwiching one together. I'm guessing the offense will be OK either way since (a) Gus Malzahn seems to be decent at this coaching/coordinating thing and (b) quarterback Ryan Aplin is the reigning Sun Belt Player of the Year after putting up some ginormous numbers in an offense that didn't have a running back worthy of 10 carries a game.

In summary, it will be a traveshamockery if this team doesn't win its crappy conference.

UPDATE: Dyer's waiver request was denied Monday. Good timing.

Marquise Goodwin WOW: Marquise Goodwin is apparently quite good at jumping long distances:

Texas wide receiver Marquise Goodwin has qualified for the Olympics and will compete in the long jump for the U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Goodwin set a personal best with a jump of 8.33 meters at the Olympic trials. That's 27 feet and 4.25 inches for those of us not on the metric system.

Dude ... like ... yeah. That's freakin' impressive, especially for a guy who's a legit football player (30-plus catches in each of his first three years) and not just a track guy playing football.

I really have nothing else to say here but would like to reiterate that Texas has a 5-foot-9 receiver who can jump into the end zone from just beyond the 9-yard line. Amazing.

Great googly moogly: It's a playoff-type thing

The thing I said had a 0.04 percent chance of happening yesterday actually happened: There is a consensus on a four-team playoff-type thing.

Via ESPN:

CHICAGO -- The BCS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick on Wednesday endorsed a seeded four-team playoff model for college football that would begin for the 2014 season.

Reaction:

All that stuff about the presidents having to get involved and be all presidential in the process has been rendered moot; all they have to do now is officially approve this thing next Tuesday, which should be a formality since the Oversight Committee's only real participatory role throughout the existence of the BCS has been to sign off on whatever tweaks were being recommended. In other words, it should be a formality, although ESPN says they'll still nominally discuss other options (specifically the plus-one) since they want to be "full and complete."

Whatever. It's happening.

A probably-obvious-but-important observation: This is not a plus-one, which would just add one layer of games in between the regular season and the championship game and unquestionably still result in some scenarios with more than two deserving teams at the end. The thing that's being implemented is essentially an extension from a two-team playoff (which is what exists right now) to a four-team one, which means (a) the team that wins will, by definition, have the strongest resume of anybody in the country by virtue of beating at least two other top-four teams to end the year and (b) it's much, much less likely that somebody will get screwed.

I went back through the history of the BCS and found the following teams that could have been considered legitimately deserving (at least as deserving as one of the top two, in other words) but would've been left out of a four-team bracket:

2009: No. 6 Boise State, 12-0 (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati and TCU were all unbeaten)
2008: No. 5 USC, 11-1, and No. 6 Utah, 12-0 (Oklahoma, Florida, Texas and Alabama all had one loss)
2007: The year of chaos; there were six two-loss teams behind No. 1 Ohio State, so differentiating between the fourth team in and the three teams out wouldn't have been easy. No. 10 Hawaii went 12-0 but wasn't that great and proved it by getting utterly destroyed by two-loss Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
2006: No. 8 Boise State, 12-0
2004: No. 6 Utah, 12-0, and No. 9 Boise State, 12-0
1998: There were four relatively comparable one-loss teams that would have been shoehorned into the three spots behind No. 1 Tennessee.

It's also worth mentioning that Tulane, Miami (OH) and Marshall had undefeated seasons in there but at no point even entered the BCS discussion since ... I mean ... yeah. The Hawaii thing. I'm not sure exactly how that fits into a limited playoff format but would have a hard time arguing for those teams' inclusion when they really did nothing to demonstrate being elite (that's the difference between those teams and the above-listed Boise and Utah teams).

Anyway, that list demonstrates why a four-team bracket is not entirely perfect: There have been some seasons featuring more than four potentially title-worthy teams. FWIW, my personal preference would be a six-team playoff with byes for the top two (woo regular season!) and on-campus siting for the first two rounds. I don't ever want anything bigger than that; the regular season really starts to lose its value when the top 16 teams (teams that went 8-4, in some cases) are getting thrown into a blender at neutral sites. In that scenario, there's literally no benefit to having gone 12-0 rather than having gone 10-2 (other than a nominally easier path based on seeding that may or may not be very accurate). But the four-team playoff-type thing preserves almost all the value of the regular season and still takes care of a large majority of the really egregious BCS ridiculi (that's plural for ridiculousness), most notably Auburn in '03, Florida State/Miami/Washington in '01 and Florida/Michigan in '06. I can find only three seasons (1998, 2007 and 2008) in which at least major-conference one team that could've made a reasonable argument for inclusion in a title-determining playoff wasn't included. That's improvement, especially with Boise and Utah now in major(-ish) conferences.

As I explained in a Facebook post earlier today, what I really want out of a playoff is this: determine the national champion only from the teams that proved deserving over the course of the regular season without de-emphasizing said regular season in any way. It's pretty obvious that there's no system that'll be perfect since (a) perfect is an entirely objective thing and (b) the circumstances vary significantly from year to year. Still, the four-team thing -- from a format standpoint, specifically -- is closer to my version of perfect than most of the realistic alternatives are. So that's nice.

That said, the siting plan sucks. Details:

The two national semifinal games would be played within the existing BCS bowl games (Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar) on a rotating basis, with the host sites being predetermined before each season. The national championship game would be offered to the highest bidding city. 

Bleh. The lack of on-campus semifinal games is really inexcusable given the difficulty of traveling twice, sometimes cross country both times, in the span of just over a week if your team of choice actually makes it that far. Rhetorical question: Who's gonna pay for a flight, a hotel, a $200-a-pop ticket and various other expenses for a semifinal game knowing that the two possible outcomes are (a) a devastating, season-ending loss and (b) a win that leads to another game that you now don't have the money to attend since you just blew your proverbial load? An answer to that rhetorical question: Almost nobody other than possibly the alumni who are local to the bowl site.

And I'm not sure what happened to the tie-in hosting plan, which was supposedly the favorite and at least would have created some tenuous geographical/historical connections by allowing the top two seeds to host at their affiliated bowl sites (Big Ten/Pac-12 at the Rose Bowl, SEC/Big 12 at wherever the Champions Bowl will be played, etc.). I liked that proposal a lot better than the one that's being recommended, which basically just rolls the playoff-type thing into the BCS rotation and will eventually result in USC playing Boise State in the Orange Bowl or something. Requesting seat fillers in Aisle Miami, plz.

It can't possibly be that difficult to coordinate the hosting of a playoff game rather than a regular BCS game on short notice (and there'd be about a month between the end of the regular season and the semifinals); what's the difference? And if there is none, why would anybody (other than the bowls, which should have no decision-making power) consider this an optimal arrangement? I just don't see the benefit to a rotational plan and saw plenty of benefits to the various other plans.

As for the selection process ...

Sources told ESPN.com that under the recommended model, four participating teams would be selected by a committee, which would consider certain criteria such as conference championships and strength of schedule.

... one exists.

I kinda like the idea of a selection committee (due to the potential for bracket/seeding flexibility based on common sense) but have some concerns about its size and potential biases. Hopefully it bears no resemblance to the coaches poll or the Harris Poll, which is filled with random people with tenuous connections to college football and 85-year-old former coaches who might be senile. The scary thing: I'm not exactly sure what would be better. I suppose I wouldn't mind an assortment of national media dudes (Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit, Andy Staples, Ralph Russo, Dennis Dodd, Dan Wetzel, et al) who presumably get to see a ton of games and get some insider-y insight as to the relative quality of the relevant teams.

I also wouldn't mind some sort of subjective component -- computer ratings, basically -- but only in the event that the restrictions on margin of victory and whatnot get removed. I've been saying this for a while: There's no point using computer polls but mandating that certain useful data NOT be included. Remove the restrictions and the result would be FEI-type numbers -- adjusted for strength of schedule and efficiency -- that would be of some undeniable value in the selection discussions (kinda like how RPI used by the NCAA tournament committee). Just to be clear, I don't expect that to happen due to all the yammering about transparency, etc.

Anyway, I'm curious to see some detail on the whole committee thing. There's gotta be some specificity as to what exactly "considering certain criteria such as conference championships and strength of schedule" means given the aforementioned transparency talk; I'm not sure this is something I want left open to interpretation. And on a somewhat-related note, aren't conference championships and strength of schedule inherently built into the voting process? The redundant application of two arbitrarily selected factors won't somehow produce a more "accurate" or "representative" top four. I could see that being an issue for everybody outside the Big Ten/Pac-12/Big 12/SEC/ACC if/when it becomes apparent that the process is weighted and the Boise States of the world are still getting left out almost entirely because of conference affiliation. Whether that will be negated, at least to some extent, by whatever benefit is provided to conference champions remains to be seen.

So that's a concern. The siting thing is more of an annoyance than a concern; I will not like it and will openly campaign against it in favor of on-campus playoff games, which would be utterly awesome. Probably my biggest concern (this is from Ivan Maisel and pretty well summarizes my long-standing feelings about a playoff):

For years, the presidents and BCS proponents have told us that it is a law of nature that playoffs expand, that four teams will become eight, eight will become 16. If you think this is a good idea, you haven't paid attention to the state of the college basketball postseason, which is, of course, the very problem with the health of the college basketball regular season. ...

The playoff is not a panacea. Playoffs don't identify the best team of the season. They identify the best team at the end of the season. It well may be an incremental change in the game, but it is a sea change in the philosophy of the postseason.

Yessir. I have always wanted and will always want a season champion and not a playoff champion. The four-team playoff-type thing works for me in that regard in a way that a 16-team PLAYOFF EXTRAVAGANZA would not. I'm hoping the talk about preserving the value of the regular season actually means something in terms of limiting the scope of the postseason; it apparently has thus far, which is an indicator that the "law of nature" in terms of bracket expansion is not necessarily a law but rather an eventual likelihood. An eight-team setup would be suboptimal in terms of preserving the relevance of the regular season but not untenable; a 16-team bracket would induce so, so much ANGAR. It literally hurts me to imagine a scenario in which last year's LSU-Alabama game and the '06 Michigan-Ohio State game mean nothing other than seeding and temporary bragging rights that will be negated by playoff results. Do not want

But I probably won't have to worry about that until I'm at least 50 and have a perfectly manicured lawn; the present is for going "WOOOO" (exclamation points would be added if not for the uninspiring bowl-rotation compromise and the selection-related uncertainty). A playoff-type thing featuring the hypothetical top four teams in the country: We will haz one. I literally can't believe I just typed those particular words in that particular order.

Ohio State might not be done just yet

Question of the day: When ESPN and Ohio State are telling two different stories, which one do you believe? That's particularly relevant given this potentially awesome news/rumor from Pat Forde:

The NCAA notified Ohio State by letter last week that it is still investigating other issues involving the program. The result could be a second notice of allegations and a second trip through the NCAA justice system.

Yay? Maybe:

OSU spokesman Jim Lynch said president Gordon Gee got a letter from the NCAA on Aug. 3 but that it said "absolutely nothing about additional allegations."

"The university has not received any additional allegations from the NCAA." Lynch said. "As a member institution, we are committed to working together with the NCAA to examine any information concerning potential violations of NCAA legislation. We do not anticipate discussing any additional allegations with the Committee on Infractions on Friday other than those self reported in March, 2011."

There's some impressive legalese in there, but before I get to that, let's back up a second: If Forde's right, this will be other shoe we've all been waiting for since ESPN, Yahoo, Sports Illustrated, the Columbus Dispatch and every other media organization in the Western Hemisphere started uncovering piles of major violations. It didn't make a whole lot of sense when OSU reportedly was told just a couple weeks ago that there weren't "any new violations" and there was "no evidence that Ohio State failed to properly monitor its football program." Words like that seem to indicate a certain sense of finality that was hard to reconcile with what we were seeing with our own eyes.

This mostly buried sentence in the ESPN story provides a bit of explanation:

The July 21 case summary also addressed only the allegations related to the tattoo parlor -- no statement was made in the NCAA's 17-page report about the status of any the other allegations that have come forth since scandal erupted.

So there ya go* -- everything other than the TatGate stuff apparently was put on the backburner during the initial probe, and the July 21 report was referring ONLY to the previously recognized violations and not the overarching investigation.

But getting back to my "legalese" comment, the wording in Ohio State's statement is interesting (reading between the lines FTW). The school says that the letter didn't mention "any additional allegations," but it might have referenced an ongoing investigation, which is what Forde's saying. And the fact that OSU doesn't "anticipate discussing any additional allegations with the Committee on Infractions on Friday" is obvious; if there's more stuff being investigated, it would have to be encapsulated in a second notice of allegations, which would lead to another hearing with the Committee on Infractions and amended/additional penalties.

So the school's not really saying anything that directly disputes the ESPN report. What they're doing is public-relations damage control, which I imagine they've become quite good at over the past six months.

As for the rumored investigation, I'm reserving judgment until we see (a) what happens at the hearing on Friday and (b) if a second notice of allegations is issued in the relatively near future. My skepticism meter is set to "high" with regards to everything the NCAA does nowadays. But if the really shady stuff -- Pryor's loaner cars, all the Dennis Talbott shenanigans, the "missing" equipment, etc. -- ends up getting thrown into the investigation at some point and leads to a dragged-out case with truly meaningful penalties, it will restore about 1 percent of my faith in the oversight of college football. And that will bring it all the way up to 1 percent.

* I'm still a little confused about that "case report" from the TatGate stuff: Sending a letter that basically says "you're in the clear" while still investigating the most severe allegations seems more than a little disingenuous.

Jim Delany gets ALL OF THE POWER (not really)

This is the headline on every story about the Big Ten's allegedly insane rules proposals:

Big Ten Commissioner Wants To Have Power To Fire Coaches

This is accurate only in the most general sense, and by "accurate only in the most general sense" I mean "not very accurate." The proposal itself is hidden behind a Chronicle of Higher Education paywall (and thus totally hidden) but is summarized on the organization's website as follows:

The idea comes from an 18-page proposal being circulated among Big Ten leaders on the heels of the Penn State scandal. The proposal, which has not been approved by the league, would give the commissioner and a group of powerful presidents the authority to penalize, suspend, or terminate the employment of coaches whose behavior damages the league’s reputation.

Note the first eight words of the bolded-for-emphasis portion: "the commissioner and a group of powerful presidents." The formation of a God-like committee that includes Jim Delany is not the same as "DELANY WANTS TO BE GOD."

And my understanding -- based on the various quotes circulating from Big Ten athletic directors -- is that the commissioner/committee wouldn't have unilateral firing power but would have some sort of disciplinary power that would resemble the NCAA's (the NCAA's version of employment authority: a show-cause that doesn't technically represent a termination but makes the employee in question all but unemployable). Said quotes (or summaries of said quotes):

Minnesota President Eric Kaler said he doubts that individual schools would be willing to give up control to the conference on such an issue of firing a coach.

"A lot of things have been discussed, but I have not been party to any conversation that would suggest the commissioner would have unilateral power to fire coaches," (Michigan athletic director Dave) Brandon told the AP. "That's kind of out of left field, and I don't think the commissioner would want that kind of power."

Illini athletic director Mike Thomas called the proposal "a work in progress." Thomas wasn't prepared to endorse the idea of coaches or other officials potentially being fired by the commissioner.

So yeah. The plan/intent is not to make Jim Delany omnipotent.

That said, there is/was a potentially horrifying subsection ...

In the event of a major incident that "significantly harmed the reputation of the league," the commissioner would be able to take matters into his own hands. ...

In certain circumstances requiring "immediate and decisive action," the commissioner would have unilateral authority to "take any and all actions" in the best interest of the Big Ten.

... that (a) the Big Ten has already publicly backed away from and (b) would be totally unnecessary anyway. As far as I can tell, there's never been an event in Big Ten history that would've warranted the implementation of martial commissioner-al law; nobody knew about the Penn State thing until everybody knew, at which point everybody involved was fired immediately and whatever power had been granted to the almighty overseer would've been rendered irrelevant. The only power that would be relevant here would be the power to remove/suspend Penn State from the conference entirely, which currently requires eight votes, but I can't imagine a scenario in which half (or more) of the conference presidents would veto something massive like that and Delany would approve it anyway (keep in mind that his employment status is determined by the presidents as a collective).

As for the committee's usefulness, I also can't really envision a scenario in which a show-cause-type penalty for a still-employed coach would be necessary since the coaches who "damage the league's reputation" to the extent that devastating penalties are appropriate just don't survive. Evidence: Joe Paterno got fired. No other evidence necessary.

In summary, something something barn door something horses. I think the idea here is to feel warm and fuzzy about an adequate contingency plan that probably will never be needed except maybe in the event of that one thing that already happened and kinda necessitated said contingency plan. My level of concern about a potential abuse of power in the event of something totally horrifying: close to zero. It's so close to zero that I can't believe I just wrote/typed 700 words about it, thus limiting the time I'll have this evening to question Al Golden's sanity.

It's officially official

It's playoff time (in 2014):

A committee of university presidents on Tuesday approved the BCS commissioners' plan for a four-team playoff to start in two years.

Lulz at all that stuff I wrote about the presidents getting all presidential and screwing everything up; they got a consensus recommendation and approved it about three hours later, which makes this quote ...

"There were differences of views," Virginia Tech president Charles W. Steger said. "I think it would be a serious mistake to assume it was a rubber stamp."

... kinda nonsensical. Instant approval + zero Harvey Perlman plus-one filibusters = rubber stamp.

So ... it's official (the outline is, anyway). There will be a playoff (!!!) comprised of four teams and semifinals that rotate between the six BCS games (the Champions Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl and an assortment of three other games that will probably include the Sugar Bowl and the Cotton Bowl) via a contract that runs through 2025.

What's not official: the details. There apparently wasn't any discussion of the selection process/guidelines or revenue distribution, both of which will require some negotiating that will undoubtedly include ominous comments and politicking and blah blah blah. I was expecting a little more immediate specificity to the general agreements that (a) there will be a committee made up of some people -- presumably conference commissioners and/or athletic directors, a la the NCAA tournament committee -- and (b) there will be money to go around. I'm also minimally concerned seeing as how they got the complicated part done in about three meetings and now have about three months before needing a finalized version to pitch to the networks.

There's not much else to say/write here about the aforementioned approval given the previous 487 (approximately) related posts on this site. Playoff playoff playoff. Playoff.

More reaction -- of the non-newsy, what-it-means-to-me variety -- tomorrow.

It took 16 days to find Todd Graham?

I came across a quote recently that now seems quite appropriate:

"If I had to put my finger on anything, it's the notion that ... once the job is open, they're going to be banging my door down, and I'm going to pick and choose among all the great candidates. The only question is, which of these great coaches will I invite? ...

"There hadn't been any preparation for this that I could see. Nothing that said, 'We need to get ready for this.' And then it started to unravel."

That comment came from longtime Michigan faculty spokesman Percy Bates after the total debacle that was the 2007 coaching search. I've referenced that search-type thing several times on this site but never fully explained exactly how much of a debacle it really was.

In relatively condensed form (courtesy of Three and Out): Bill Martin had Kirk Ferentz at the top of his list but was immediately shot down by president Mary Sue Coleman, so he moved on to Tony Dungy only to realize that he was actually running a college program and not an NFL team. He told the six-person search committee he had no interest in Brian Kelly and "didn't want" Les Miles. He then went on vacation with a new cell phone that he didn't know how to use (guh) just as the Les Miles story broke on ESPN, and nobody -- including Miles' agent, who had actually been trying to make Miles' interest in the job known -- could reach him for an entire weekend. Martin then flew to New York, met with Greg Schiano and offered him the job despite never informing the search committee that he was considering Schiano. Schiano accepted the job, then changed his mind the next morning, at which point Michigan decided Miles was looking pretty good. So Martin and Coleman called Miles, who told them that he "would never say no to Michigan" but couldn't do anything until after the national title game (this was after his "great team yadda yadda" presser). Since Lloyd Carr hates Les Miles with the fire of a million suns, Carr personally called Rich Rodriguez (!), encouraged him to consider the Michigan job and then pushed his name to Martin as a candidate. A meeting was scheduled, an offer was made on the spot since it was the middle of December and RichRod accepted a day later after a less-than-encouraging talk with West Virginia president Michael Garrison.

Since you probably skimmed most of that, I'll summarize: There was an AD nominally running the search, a president overruling him and overseeing him (sometimes out of necessity because of incompetence), a search committee that had no real authority or influence, a person pulling strings and sabotaging the search from the inside and no real plan or direction despite having a full year of advance warning that a search was gonna be necessary. This is how you end up offering the job to somebody at an impromptu meeting on December 14 with no real negotiations. Again: debacle.

There is a point to all this, BTW. Arizona State just hired Todd Graham after a 16-day search that featured all the same insanity, incompetence and total lack of direction. I'm fairly confident that Kevin Sumlin was at the top of a very short list; once he bailed due to googly eyes for Texas A&M, everything fell apart. The next two weeks produced an ever-growing pile of evidence that Lisa Love and Steve Patterson and Michael Crow and whoever else may or may not have been involved* had absolutely no idea what they were doing. The June Jones "haha just kidding" ridiculousness sits atop that pile. I don't know what happened that day; all I know is that there was either no advance discussion with the prominent boosters or no advance approval from Crow. Both of those things are inexplicable given that a contract was already on the table.

Exactly one week of total silence later, Todd Graham was announcing his exit from Pitt via text message with the explanation that he didn't have time to meet with his players because of the "timing of the circumstances." I doubt there was a long negotiation process, which means the past six days were either perfectly organized and kept totally under wraps or were spent figuring out WTF to do next.
So ... Todd Graham. He's 47 and will be coaching his fourth school in six years, which represents sort of a pattern. Inevitable reaction: OMG HE'S LANE KIFFIN WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!? Pitt wideout Devin Street went ape on Twitter, which if nothing else is good to document hilarious reactions to things.

The idea that coaches have some unwritten-but-required loyalty to their programs and players is almost as laughable as the idea of a coach's contract meaning anything in terms of job security. Yet this story gets written every year about (insert coach here) leaving (insert program here) for (insert slightly better program here) after (insert number of years here). People say dumb things, a new coach gets hired, everybody moves on, rinse, repeat.

I remember when a bunch of Cincinnati players' heads exploded because Brian Kelly left for Notre Dame after issuing a bunch of standard non-denial denials, which ... umm ... really? And Kyle Turley is still OUTRAGED that Brady Hoke left San Diego State for Michigan. Mmmkay. Whether or not leaving a job on little/zero notice is ideal is irrelevant; it's the way it works now. Any 20-year-old who's still naive enough to think these guys are 100 percent committed to the place they're at and wouldn't bail for Dream Job X or a significantly bigger paycheck is extremely naive. Student-athlete, meet real world.

ESPN blogger Ted Miller said it best:

Look, folks: Being a college football coach is a job. It is not a charitable calling. Loyalty? There are going to be more than 25 coaching changes next fall. There are 120 FBS teams. The nature of the business is to get fired or to climb. It's best to do the latter.

Todd Graham wants to coach at Arizona State more than Pittsburgh. Most folks would. So instead of doing something he doesn't want to do, he's doing what he wants to. His only loyalty should be to his family and friends, not his bosses.

Some will throw around insults like "liar." They will say things like Graham told his players he was staying. Well, he was staying. Until he got a better offer. The lesson the players should learn from this is to be ambitious and to learn how the big-boy world works. In other words, Graham just helped them grow up.

BOOM ESPN'D. Climb or (eventually) be fired. I don't have any issue with a guy jumping around from job to job; the only downside is that hiring said guy means there's a good chance you're looking for a different guy in the near future. The chances of significant long-term success are an order of magnitude lower with a guy who probably won't be the long-term coach one way or another.

As for the coaching stuff, it's funny how everybody jumps on the whole "high-octane" thing and goes ZOMG OFFENSE TULSA WWHHEEEE (I've clearly spent too much time on the internet today). Graham was Tulsa's defensive coordinator and West Virginia's co-defensive coordinator before that. His background: defense. It's the thing that's not the offense. He definitely has an offensive philosophy, so to speak, but he's not the guy responsible for all the stuff at Tulsa. I've seen this paragraph (or a variation of it) reproduced in about eight different places today:

His Tulsa teams led the nation in total offense in 2007 (543.9 yards per game) and 2008 (569.9). The 2007 team posted a 63-7 victory over Bowling Green in the GMAC Bowl, and the '08 team followed with a 45-13 victory over Ball State in the GMAC Bowl.

Know who the offensive coordinator was in 2007 and '08? Gus Malzahn, who was fresh off a year of insanity at Arkansas. Malzahn left for Auburn after that, at which point the offense regressed to mediocrity en route to a 5-7 finish in '09. Result: Graham went out and hired Chad Morris, who took the offense right back to awesomeness and is now getting paid a ridonkulous $1.3 million as O-coordinator at Clemson.

Here's Graham's record at Tulsa:

2007: 10-4 (first nationally in total offense under Malzahn, 108th in total defense)
2008: 11-3 (first nationally in total offense under Malzahn, 74th in total defense)
2009: 5-7 (35th in total offense under Herb Hand, 85th in total defense)
2010: 10-3 (fifth in total offense under Chad Morris, 111th in total defense)

Takeaways: His overall success coincided directly with having an elite O-coordinator and his defenses were consistently bad. That seems potentially problematic for a guy whose primary emphasis is defense. BTW, his one year at Rice was almost identical: a pretty good offense led by Major Applewhite (who's now co-coordinator at Texas) and a terrible defense, with those two variants combining to produce a 7-6 record at a place coming off a 1-11 season.

The promising thing there (other than the record, obviously) is that he twice went out and found under-the-radar guys who turned out to be amazing coordinators. ASU might (emphasis on might) actually have the money to keep a Chad Morris-caliber coordinator if that guy were to matriculate out of a haboob in 2013. I say 2013 because it apparently won't happen this year: Graham is reportedly bringing co-offensive coordinator Mike Norvell from Pitt, which is good in a familiarity sense but not so great from a results-to-date sense. Norvell has been a co-coordinator for all of one year, basically working under Calvin Magee at Pitt before Magee left last week to work with RichRod at Arizona (mmmm, irony). He's never called plays, and anything that can be gleaned from last year's results (84th in yardage, 70th in scoring) isn't very useful since Tino Sunseri is not good and Ray Graham was on pace for about 1,800 yards before blowing out his knee. I'm willing to reserve judgment on Norvell; still, I can't get too excited about a guy who's been almost solely a receivers coach so far and doesn't have a resume even remotely comparable to Morris or Malzahn, both of whom were being nationally recognized as high school coaches for destroying everybody. Having a high-octane offense is dependent on having a coordinator capable of coaching it well.

The defense is another matter. Graham's involvement on that side of the ball is pretty fuzzy; he talks more about the speed of the offense and the "vision" and random other buzzwords of choice. The guy to know: Keith Patterson, who's been Graham's D-coordinator ever since Graham got promoted to head coach at Tulsa and will reportedly join him at ASU after the BJDSFKDF Compass Bowl.

Patterson's history (I already listed the craptacular Tulsa numbers but will put retype them here for ease of reading):

2007: 108th in total defense, 100th in scoring defense
2008: 74th in total defense, 75th in scoring defense
2009: 85th in total defense, 74th in scoring defense
2010: 111th in total defense, 85th in scoring defense
2011: 41st in total defense, 33rd in scoring defense

The 2011 jump might have had more to do with the defensive talent in place at Pitt than any coaching revelation; the microscopic sample size there makes it kinda hard to make any grand conclusions. Zooming out, there's really nothing to show Patterson is an above-average D-coordinator. FYI, Graham's numbers at Tulsa were quite a bit better: 21st and 40th in yardage in his two years. Unfortunately for him and probably for ASU, his defensive influence apparently ceased existing once he became head coach.

In the big picture, if you're looking for clues from his year at Pitt ... umm ... good luck. The offense wasn't very good and the defense was a little above average, but those both come with pretty significant caveats because of injuries and sample size and the Big East and whatnot. The Tulsa/Rice record (43-23) looks impressive on the surface but cracks a little with analysis of exactly how/when those teams succeeded. Consistently hiring good coordinators is a skill that I praise all the time and believe is massively underrated, and Graham has a history of doing that on offense. That's the good news. The bad news: A coach relying on good coordinators only wins as long as he has, like, good coordinators, and neither guy coming to ASU has the resume of a good coordinator (not yet, anyway).

Just to be clear, Graham's not a bad hire. ASU could have done worse (Mike Martz gack). I just look at a guy with a debatable role in his successful years and one 6-6 year at a comparable program and think, "meh." The upside seems relatively low barring him stumbling into the next Chip Kelly/Gus Malzahn at some point in the not-too-distant future. Frankly, I'd have preferred June Jones given the guaranteed passing-game dominance and the almost-guaranteed (even if moderate) improvement in wins. Todd Graham offers neither of those, zero promise of long-term stability and zero local recruiting connections.

This was from my Dennis Erickson post-mortem thing:

Somebody in my office threw out an interesting stat the other day: Erickson averaged 6.2 wins a year. Dirk Koetter averaged 6.7. Bruce Snyder averaged 6.4. Since Frank Kush retired in 1979, the 32-year average is 6.7 wins. The mediocrity: It's stifling.

Going back to what I said earlier, ASU isn't USC. An average-ish coach will produce average-ish results since there aren't any obvious program advantages. This program can be better -- just look at what Mike Bellotti did at Oregon (although he had Phil Knight pulling some strings) and what Rich Rodriguez did at West Virginia and what Mike Leach did at Texas Tech and what Joe Tiller did at Purdue and what Art Briles is doing at Baylor (Baylor!). None of those last four schools has any more geographical/financial/historical advantages than ASU; they succeeded/are succeeding because they found a coach who did/does some systematic thing really well and used it to win a bunch of games and get things figuratively snowballing.

Outside of the excessive use of forward slashes, the takeaway there: It's hard to consistently win more than about six games a year at ASU. It can be done by the right guy (GUS MALZAHN Y U NO LIKE THE OTHER ASU?), but I'm having a hard time finding anything that'll make me believe Graham is that guy. I don't even think Lisa Love believes it:

"Criteria for our head coach was established, and the word that was at the forefront of discussions was 'energy' ... energy towards promoting our program in the community and with former players.

Errr yes. Energy. That's the ticket. There's one fundamental thing Lisa Love doesn't understand (Greg Byrne does and thus will pwn her until she gets fired at some point in the near future): In college sports, your program is only as good as your coach. Period.

Todd Graham seems to be a slightly above-average** coach. That's fine given some of the alternatives and the disaster of a coaching search, but ... I mean ... 6.7 wins, man.

. . . . .

*A co-worker with a prominent ASU connection described the Love/Patterson/Crow mess as "a two-headed dog that's blind in both heads." Seems about right.

**This really ranges from "average" to "good" depending on the quality of his offensive coordinator at any given time. With Norvell calling plays, I'm filing him a little closer to "average."