BCS changes selection criteria

American Football Coaches Association President Tyrone Willingham announced that, effective immediately, the coaches will not permit their poll to be used in the BCS selection procedure. AFCA executive director Grant Teaff indicated that it was "a violation of coaching ethics to allow the coaches to have such a key roll in the BCS championship process. It is unfair to allow certain coaches, with their vote to determine who their opponents will be, and whether they can play in the championship game. We have seen things reach a crisis situation this year with the Big-12 championship being decided by the BCS ranking. This gives some coaches an unfair advantage in picking their own league championship. We would be better off just using a coin flip."

In response to the situation, BCS coordinator John Swofford announced that the US News and World Report "Best National Colleges and Universities" rankings will be used in place of the coaches rankings. "US News does a good job of ranking our nation's colleges. We think it will be a great opportunity to show that academics really do play an important role in collegiate athletics." These rankings will make up one third of the BCS selection criteria, just as the coaches poll had previously.

Shortly after the change was announced, some conference realignments were announced. Jim Delany announced that "effective in the academic year 2009-2010, University of Chicago will resume playing football in the Big-10. They were one of the charter members of the Big-10's predecessor conference. After they dropped football in the pre-war days, we had lost track of them. We have recently discovered that they had been playing Division III ball. It was just unfair to have them playing at a lower level, so we invited them back to the Big-10"

University of Chicago president Robert Zimmer announced on his web site that the University had received a "significant sum of money" in return for having their football program resume play in the Big-10. "Big-10 commissioner Jim Delany said we would be a shoe-in for an at-large BCS bowl with our high US News Ranking. They offered us an endowed chair in the physics department as well as additional library funding in exchange for allowing the big-10 to share in some of the BCS money."

The Big-12, perhaps in response to the big-10 becoming another "big-12" announced its own expansion. Commissioner Dan Bebee said "we had always wanted Rice to be a member of the Big-12. We just didn't another team in the north division to balance the conference. Now that Washington University in St. Louis has joined the conference, those problems are allayed." He also announced that the conference would be renamed Big-14, because "unlike other conferences, we know how to count."

There have been rumors of further realignment. An Emory University spokesman reported that they had received requests from both the SEC and ACC to join their conferences. However "I will reiterate, that Emory does not have a football program, and has no intention of starting one." Rumor has it that the SEC is still on the lookout for additional member, but is not very hopeful. According to an anonymous source "This brains thing really got us. After all, we're in the southeast, where football is king, and academics, well, they'll take a back seat. We do have Vandy, but after that, there is not a whole lot to pick from. We're thinking of sending a few thugs out to help get people to vote Florida in the top 25."

Not all conferences are thinking expansion. Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen stated that the Pac-10 has no intentions of expanding. "With Stanford, Cal, UCLA and USC the Pac-10 already has 4 of the top 5 west coast schools. And Caltech dropped football 15 years ago." The ACC is also content with their standings. "We have Duke and Virginia in the top 25 with USA Today. We figure, every other team has made it in the top-25 of the coaches poll, so this will only further add to the parity of the conference."

Notably silent has been the Big East. According to some anonymous tipsters, they are attempting negotiations to merge with the Ivy league. However, they have had major hangups on how to integrate the non-basketball schools. The Ivy league is also contemplating a switch to the Football Bowl Division on their own. The return of the "Harvard-Yale" national championship games does seem appealing to some. Though others would prefer the Ivy League just remain to itself.