Someone needs to say it

The Big XII has submitted a proposal to modify the criteria for bowl eligibility. 

The current system is a bit convoluted but it works like this.

If you want to sponsor a bowl game, you have to find two participants before going to the NCAA to request permission to have the game. The two participants (usually a conference) have to have had enough schools qualify for a bowl in the past four years to provide a reasonable chance that they will provide a team. If you want to sign someone who doesn’t have that average you sign a back-up deal with someone who does meet those averages.

When it comes time to fill those games you start by placing teams with records better than .500. When you run out of better than .500 teams you can fill remaining contracts with teams from that conference at .500. Run out of them then you start drawing down the remaining national pool of above .500 teams. Once that pool is exhausted you dip into the .500 group.

Last year the Poinsettia, Hawaii, Motor City, PapaJohns.com, and Texas bowls all had a spot to fill and the Independence had two spots to fill after exhausting all of the .500 or better teams from their contracted conferences. Before the process of filling those seven spots could begin, you had to make sure every team at above .500 landed a spot. 12-0 Boise State was able to go to Poinsettia and7-5 Louisiana Tech could go to the Independence because every WAC contracted bowl had a team above .500. Fresno State and Nevada got eligible and covered their spots.

In 2008 there were two plums that stood at 6-6 that bowl committees lusted after. Notre Dame and ACC member North Carolina State. Before anyone could deal with either of them, there was the matter of Western Michigan and Central Michigan. One was going to Motor City as the MAC representative but one had to be placed elsewhere before anyone could deal with Notre Dame or NC State. Texas selected Western Michigan and the bowls were filled.

Now lets suppose last year that instead of seven spots to fill that there had been only three. Under the current rules, Boise State, Louisiana Tech, and Western Michigan as the only remaining teams above .500 all go to a bowl. 6-6 Notre Dame and 6-6 NC State stay home.

The Big XII wants to eliminate that whole messy above .500 thing. A .500 team is treated just like a winning team. Given that same “what if there are three bowls left situation” then the outcome looks quite different. One game takes Notre Dame and one takes NC State. Western Michigan with a win over Big 10 member Illinois ends up staying home. Two WAC schools stay home out of Fresno (no significant non-conference win and losses to La.Tech and Nevada in league play), Nevada (beat MWC member UNLV, beat La.Tech and Fresno) and Louisiana Tech (beat Mississippi State) depending in large part on the proximity of an open game.

The bowl committees do want the biggest crowds and the biggest TV audiences. They are willing to take the risk that the rich leagues cannot produce a team to hook-up to that gravy train. The NCAA membership has said in the past that it is OK to take a team that didn’t achieve better than a .500 record if you contracted with them prior to the season but if you are short a team, you can’t just go for the glitz, the cost of that concession to make .500 “good enough” on existing contracts is that above .500 teams receive priority when those contracted leagues cannot provide a team.

Last year, 40% of the WAC teams making it to a bowl made it because the rules protect above .500 teams. The MAC had five bowl teams and 40% made it because of vacancies, half were required picks.

Dan Beebe wants to strip away that protection and end the idea that above .500 is the proper standard for bowl teams. This year his conference is likely to produce at least two more teams than they will have contracted bowls. He would prefer that a 6-6 team that finished in the bottom 4th of the Big XII be selected over a team finishing in the top half of one of the other conferences.

Big XII is better than the Sun Belt so that makes it OK right? Well the Sun Belt is something like 4-35 against the Big XII since 2004. The Sun Belt is 1-32 in Big XII stadiums but the Big XII is only 1-3 at Sun Belt stadiums and 1-0 at a neutral site. A lot of that superiority comes from Sun Belt teams playing at top Big XII teams.

Yeah Commissioner Beebe is right, a 6-6 that has five losses to Top 25 teams is probably more marketable and may well be better than a 7-5 from another league. Then again that 6-6 team is generating multiples of times the ticket revenue of that 7-5 and is receiving a sum of money from the Big XII that is about the same as the 7-5 is spending on its entire athletic budget. Shouldn’t he be spending his time questioning his member institutions about what they are doing with the great bounty they have been blessed with to only stagger in at .500? Shouldn’t he be encouraging them to perform and be successful rather than establishing .500 as the target?

Maybe instead of burying a knife in the back of the schools who took a check, traveled to their stadium and helped them eek their way to .500, he should be scolding his members for feeling entitled to a reward for not being competitive against their conference peers.

When King David stole the wife of one his soldiers then had the man killed, the prophet Nathan confronted him with the story of a rich man who stole a poor man’s sole possession. Nathan needs to get on airplane and get to Dan Beebe’s office in a hurry. Commissioner Beebe wants to steal the few chances the poorer leagues have to pick-up a bowl berth because the Big XII’s wealth fails to satisfy.

It’s disgusting. If shame still existed in modern America the presidents of the twelve wealthy and highly regarded universities in the Big XII would put a rapid stop to such a gross and malignant attempt to crush their poor neighbors. Since they will not, my respect for the league and its members will have the word “former” in front of the word “respect”.