Columnist Ron Kantowski: BCS takes the Fifth on fifth game

Thursday, June 10, 2004 | 11:02 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

That "cool" breeze in the air must mean football season is just around the corner.

Or is it the hot air emanating from the NCAA, the Tournament of Roses Committee, the power conference commissioners and anybody else whose name starts with a "B," "C" or "S" that is helping to keep college football front and center during the middle of June?

Since its inception, the college football power brokers have been massaging the Bowl Championship Series, or Bowl Coalition, or whatever other alias by which the supposed next-best thing to a playoff system has been identified, in an effort to make it new and improved. But if all this massaging doesn't stop soon, the BCS is going to wind up smelling of Ben-Gay. (Which, come to think, might be an improvement.)

With the start of two-a-days just eight weeks away, the Mountain West and other have-not conferences still haven't heard whether they finally will get some of ABC's money via implementation of a fifth BCS game. Everybody keeps harping on how the mid-major conferences need to improve, but without the Here's Your Check Now Go Away Bowl, or whatever the new game will be called, that's much easier said than done.

That's just one issue that needs to be resolved. There are others.

For instance, Grandpa is getting a little cranky. The Rose Bowl, considered the grandaddy of the bowl games (so I guess that would make the Continental Tire Bowl the red-headed stepchild), doesn't want to play second fiddle to those would-be cellists, the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange. Under the current setup, each of the interlopers also gets to host the so-called national championship game once every four years.

The Rose Bowl, although it's said to be willing to compromise, doesn't want to forsake its traditional ties with the Pac-10 and Big Ten to be part of the BCS. I think it might be most willing to compromise in the years it is scheduled to host the title game.

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said earlier this week that by the end of this week, the BCS should pretty much know what it's going to look like in 2006, when it will add the fifth game.

Right now, however, it looks about as organized as Northwestern's running game.

Even if the fifth game becomes reality, it has been reported that the guys writing the checks (ABC, the bowls and their sponsors) don't want to include the new kid in the championship game rotation.

One idea receiving serious consideration is a "piggyback" model, which has nothing to do with the Arkansas backfield. In this system, one of the existing BCS games would also host a championship game a week after its regularly scheduled postseason "classic" featuring the weak sister conferences. Maybe that might even work, if Phoenix would agree to keep Applebee's open after 1 a.m.

ABC is said to favor another option, where four BCS games would pretty much be played around Jan. 1 with a championship game tacked on sometime in mid-January. Too bad the school presidents aren't. Apparently, they aren't willing to allow their athlete-students to miss any more classes. I mean, who's going to weave all those baskets?

Then there are the matters of new negotiations between ABC and the BCS and yet another revision of the BCS formula, which apparently will rely more on the media and coaches polls and less on strength of schedule and whatever other vague criteria are now being used to determine who gets screwed at the end of the season.

Last year, of course, it was Southern Cal, which was ranked first in both polls. But instead of having their name painted in the end zone at the championship game, the Trojans had to settle for having it put on a commemorative football from Sports Illustrated.

So let's see if I have this straight: The BCS wants to put less emphasis on strength of schedule, quality of wins and computer number crunching. And more emphasis on the polls and what happens between the sidelines in determining its champion.

I have to admit this is one idea that makes perfect sense.

Just as it did in 1985.