The Front Row

CHICAGO — The last bastion of the bowl system’s good ole boys’ club now wants it both ways like the rest of America.

Big Ten athletics directors, who once defended the bowl system like the Knights Templar guarded the Holy Grail, now want to preserve the bowls by adding a four-team playoff within their structure. Nothing more, nothing less.

“We are adamant we cannot go beyond four (teams),” Ohio State Athletics Director Gene Smith said. “If you even think about going beyond four, you are threatening the regular season.”

Nebraska Athletics Director Tom Osborne coached three national champions within the bowl system. His chancellor, Harvey Perlman, three years ago staunchly defended the bowl system in front of a Congressional hearing. Now they’ve slipped over to the playoff side.

“I think that both of us realize that what we’re dealing with here is inevitable,” Osborne said. “So then the question is, what’s the best way to do it.”

That’s the question that’s on everyone’s mind at the Big Ten spring meetings at Sofitel Hotel. League and school officials talked Monday and Tuesday about the playoff prospects with consensus on the foundation but not the particulars. The only points that most could agree upon was there should be a four-team playoff within the bowl system.

The national discussion about the top two seeds hosting semifinal games has dissipated, despite the Big Ten’s obvious home-field advantage.

“Let’s say Ohio State is hosting on whatever date it may be, January or December, and let’s say that it is 5 degrees,” Smith said. “Is that right for the game? We’re not pros. I think we need to figure out what’s best of the game and I think a fast surface, I think good weather is right for the game. It’s important for the kids.”

“If you talk about competitive advantage, if you had the semifinal games at the home field and had some Big Ten schools that had the home-field advantage in late December and you’re playing teams from the South, it probably would be a touchdown advantage,” Osborne said.

There are many questions that linger. What would happen to the conference’s eternal link with the Rose Bowl? Would the system include strictly conference champions, the best four teams or a combination? Who and by what method would the four teams be selected? Would fans travel to multiple locations and spend thousands of dollars to watch their team play a conference title game, national semifinal and national title game? How would it affect the athletes academically?

There are few answers, just discussion on most of those questions within the Big Ten, let alone how it translates nationally.

“There was somewhat of a consensus and yet an understanding and the complications and the difficulties of making something work,” Minnesota Athletics Director Joel Maturi said. “It’s not as easy as having a four-team playoff, an eight-team playoff, whatever it might be. It’s not that easy.

“We’re pretty agreeable in the sense that we would like probably a four-team playoff within the bowl system. That great thing about college football and Jim (Delany) has said it well for years, the regular season has meant something. We don’t want that to give up.”

The choosing of teams will be the sport’s most contentious issue, now that the Big Ten likely will go along with the four-team playoff. Will the playoff involve the top four conference champions or a combination? There are arguments to back up either side.

Smith is a proponent of conference champions — but only if they are good enough. A conference champion ranked eighth nationally has no place in the national semifinals, he said. But a sixth-ranked conference champion might have a case.

“I think there’s some value to trying to find a way to protect the highest-ranked conference champions,” Smith said. “I don’t know what that means. I think there’s some value in that.

“A conference championship is unbelievably valuable. You went through the gauntlet. Those high-ranked teams ought to be rewarded.”

Smith and Osborne emphasized the controversy will only heighten, not subside, with the changes. Controversy reigned in the Bowl Championship Series from the 2000 through the 2004 regular seasons with only one year (2002) providing clarity in determining the final match-up. That won’t change going forward.

“After going what we went through, we think there’s going to be more chaos than what people understand and probably just like the BCS it gets tweaked over the first two or three years,” Smith said. “This thing is not going to be perfect, and that’s what everybody, all of you need to help our fans understand. There’s no perfect system, particularly when you’re dealing with four teams.”

Last year Southeastern Conference champion Louisiana State beat fellow SEC West opponent Alabama head-to-head in the regular season. At season’s end, the teams were ranked 1-2 and played again for the BCS title. Alabama, which didn’t claim either its divisional or conference title, stopped LSU 21-0 and won the national championship.

In 2001, Colorado routed Nebraska 62-36 in the season finale, costing Nebraska the Big 12 North title. But the Cornhuskers backed into the BCS title game despite the loss.

“We all know who our national champion was this year, it was a team that didn’t even play (in its title game),” Maturi said. “But we need to somehow protect that, too, because nobody is going to argue that Alabama wasn’t the best team in the country this year. I think you need to be sensitive to allow that to happen also.”