Columnist Dean Juipe: BCS plans on Hamrick’s front burner

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2003 | 9:40 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It was not the forum where I expected to hear about the Bowl Championship Series.

It was a press conference, the kind of dog-and-pony show where a new employee is introduced and everyone involved in the hiring process engages in mutual flattery and takes a couple of bows.

Carol Harter was there, presiding over the function in her role as UNLV president.

And Mike Hamrick was there, of course, he being the new UNLV athletic director.

The stated purpose of the Monday gathering: formally announce Hamrick's appointment as AD.

The underlying intent: assure everyone associated with the school and community that the UNLV athletic department will be in good hands with Hamrick at the controls.

All the usual things were said. Words such as "integrity" and "vision" were interspersed with comments on "core values" and "pulling together" and vagaries such as taking the school to the "next level."

Harter seemed chipper and Hamrick attempted to add some levity, humorously mentioning not only that he wanted to see his impressive UNLV contract before formally resigning from his old job at East Carolina, but on the fact he expects to lose the Southern accent that is just short of a drawl.

It went well and there didn't seem to be any complaints. Hamrick came across as congenial and everyone affiliated with the school wants to see him do well.

He'll start off with a clean slate.

But both he and Harter mentioned something in their brief remarks at the podium that caught my attention. It was the Bowl Championship Series, the BCS as it's commonly known.

Each listed it among the most important issues Hamrick will address in the coming months.

"We've got to get our foot in the (BCS) door," Hamrick said before the meeting was adjourned and the key parties dispersed into one-on-one interviews with the media.

I subsequently asked Harter, Hamrick and head football coach John Robinson about it afterward and phrased my questioning around this basic premise: BCS schools are not about to open their doors (and bank accounts) to leagues such as the Mountain West, which has UNLV among its members. The BCS was meant to be exclusive and it is apt to stay that way for some time and certainly for the foreseeable future.

The BCS is a coalition of six conferences and is a football-only arrangement in which the leagues provide the participants to college football's four major bowls. The leagues -- the Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10, Big 12, SEC and ACC -- use their six champions plus two "at-large" bids to fill the eight spots in the big bowls.

They negotiate directly with the bowls, sponsors and TV networks and reap the financial windfall. In rough figures, they take in some $105 million from the games annually and they distribute all but $5 million of it to their league members.

Naturally, this irks the lesser leagues, such as the Mountain West, Conference USA, the Mid-American, the WAC and others. They want a piece of that pie.

But they're not going to get it and they may all but know it, so they're falling back on creating a ruckus and the implied threat of legal action.

The BCS response?

"Go ahead," is it in a nutshell.

I'd say the best the non-BCS leagues can hope for is a "play-in game" to one of the bowls and/or a slight increase in their cuts from the BCS bonanza. I'd also say they will never be on equal terms with the BCS schools and shouldn't waste too much time and effort on it.

Yet here was Harter and Hamrick addressing it as if it was crucial not only to UNLV but to the new athletic director's personal reputation.

"Will this be an uphill battle? No question," Hamrick said later. "But what do you do if you're in our position?

"We in the Mountain West have to formulate and develop a strategy. We have to get the public behind us.

"As business people, we can't continue to survive with the way it is now."

Well, they can continue to survive as they are now but they want the extras and the flourishes that a slice of that BCS pie would allow.

"Of course the BCS schools don't want to (change)," Harter said. "But it's hypocrisy on their part. We get so little revenue (from the bowls) that it's leading to a two-class system of haves and have nots.

"It could someday lead to a situation where every good football player will only consider going to a BCS school."

That may already be somewhat true, as Robinson knows. Yet rather than see the task of changing the BCS bylaws as inherently futile, he sees a need to make the attempt if for no other reason than appearance's sake.

"You're exactly right," he said after hearing my spiel on the unlikeliness of the BCS spreading its wealth. "I think our only hope is to scream and holler and try to make it into an issue in which the public has a say.

"It's an inequity that exists and at the very least we've got to try and get some sort of compromise.

"But I would say we can't get absorbed in it."

That's what I would say, too.