Monday night's title game between Florida State and Auburn brings an end to the 16-year BCS era, which gives way to a four-team playoff system next season
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - No other sport in America has struggled for so long over such a simple question: Which team is No. 1?
Instead of using a playoff , the power brokers of major college football long ago opted for something far more complicated. For the past 16 years, it was the Bowl Championship Series - a controversial, computer-assisted selection process that transformed the sport in unexpected ways, lasting until Monday night, when Florida State played Auburn in the final BCS title game.
'The buzz and controversy from the BCS translated from water cooler talk, to radio talk to online talk and just became a tsunami of interest,' Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany told USA TODAY Sports. 'It was very much a growth period if you look at television, revenue, the regular season, attendance and nationalization of the game.'
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Now, it's gone. A four-team playoff begins next season, with the teams chosen by a selection committee.
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USA TODAY Sports spoke with industry executives and examined various financial records to gain perspective on the winners and losers of the BCS era, a list that includes the Southeastern Conference, Nick Saban, Texas Christian, the Big East, Mickey Mouse, the 2004 Auburn team and a man named Bill Hancock.
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In 2002, when the BCS was young, the chief executives of the top six college sports leagues were paid an average of $462,000. By 2011, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott earned $2.8 million and $3.1 million, respectively, more than the $1.7 million earned by NCAA President Mark Emmert, according to the most recently available tax forms. Three other commissioners earned more than $1.5 million.
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The BCS was a big part of their success, helping boost their power as the new lords of college football. Their influence in the game's postseason showed in the financial returns. The BCS gave them a lucrative matchup of the two top teams while avoiding an expanded playoff, which might have diluted their bigger cash cow: regular-season TV rights, which continue to produce record revenue.
As the BCS and TV deals drove revenue ever higher, coaches hit the jackpot. In 1998, Nick Saban was coaching Michigan State, earning about $700,000 a year en route to a 34-24-1 record from 1995-99. He now is set to make more than 10 times that after winning four BCS championships: one at LSU and three at Alabama. His new contract at Alabama will pay him more than $7 million a year, most in the nation.
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The ripple effect was huge: In 1999, there were five college football coaches earning $1 million or more a year. By 2006, there were at least 42. This season, there were 70.
A man who once was the sole staffer of the BCS is becoming one of the most powerful executives in sports. Administrator of the BCS since 2005, the affable Hancock is executive director of the new playoff - a job that will come with a bigger budget and a 13-member staff. The BCS games were merely a series of contracts. A new limited liability corporation will field bids for host sites of the championship game and operate the game much like the Super Bowl.
Teams representing the SEC combined to win seven consecutive BCS titles - Alabama won three - going into Monday night's game. The SEC also had the most victories in BCS games (17), a snowball effect that can be attributed to recruiting in the talent-rich South, hiring expensive coaches and shrewd non-conference scheduling. Prior to the BCS era in 1998, schools from the SEC had only two national titles from 1981 to 1997.
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The BCS mimicked the Super Bowl formula to great financial success, staging its top games at top tourist destinations in or near Miami, Phoenix, New Orleans and Los Angeles. In addition to the Orange, Fiesta, Sugar and Rose Bowls, the BCS staged a championship game at one of those four bowl sites.
Before the BCS era, some of those games were tied to conference affiliations and struggled to get attractive matchups. Delany said the bowl system - which at the time had matched the top two teams in a bowl game only eight times in 56 years - 'was not healthy at the top.'
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The computer-assisted system at least created an official 1-versus-2 matchup, a formula that fetched $125 million per year from ESPN to broadcast all five games.
To improve a flawed bowl system and increase revenue, college conferences joined forces for the first time to start a mega business in 1998: the BCS. By consolidating their power, they created a postseason monster and thrived, particularly the Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern, Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast conferences.
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'Since the BCS, they learned they could do it,' Hancock said of the leagues. He added that 'there would not have been a playoff if there had not been a BCS.'
TCU
The NCAA controls the lucrative men's basketball tournament, but the BCS is the lair of the leagues and their commissioners, who negotiate contracts with TV networks and bowl organizations. Last season, the BCS games paid a record $202 million to conferences and schools, up from $145 million in 2007-08. Of that $202 million, $165<TH>million went to the top six conferences.
As the BCS gives way to next season's playoff, the conferences will be running the show.
Disney owns ABC and ESPN, which televised 33 of the 35 bowl games this year and has aired all five of the BCS games since 2011. Before the BCS era, NBC and CBS televised big bowls, too, providing some competitive diversity to the broadcasts.
Now it all rests in the white-gloved hand of Mickey Mouse: Starting next year, ESPN will pay $470 million a year over 12 years to broadcast games that are part of the playoff format.
'I wouldn't call it a monopoly because it's a competitive environment, but they've got a stranglehold on it,' Delany said.
LOSERS Computers
Since the U.S. Supreme Court stripped the NCAA of its power over television rights and gave it to conferences and schools in 1984, TV rights to regular-season college games have become so lucrative that it drove recent conference expansion and realignment, and the start of conferences' own TV networks. The Pac-12, for example, landed a 12-year, $3 billion deal with ESPN and Fox in 2011.
The big dollars give the conferences a great incentive to resist changes that might diminish viewer interest in regular-season games. A multi-round playoff could have watered down the regular season, much as it has for the NBA and college basketball regular seasons.
The BCS, though, increased interest for regular-season games, making one loss a potentially fatal blow to championship hopes. A four-team playoff barely changes that dynamic, adding one game after the bowls.
The have-nots
'One reason we created the BCS was to protect the regular season,' Delany said. 'The real value, 90% of the value of everything we're doing, is in the regular season.'
After many years in smaller leagues, TCU was invited to join the Big 12 in 2011 largely because of its football success, highlighted by two BCS appearances: a loss in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl and a win in the 2011 Rose Bowl. If the Horned Frogs had been playing mediocre football in lower-rung bowls, would the Big 12 have invited them?
Normally, conferences look to expand their television markets when they invite new members. Located in Fort Worth, TCU didn't really do that for the Big 12 because Big 12 members Baylor, Texas and Texas Tech already have a strong foothold in the greater Dallas TV market.
TCU is 6-12 in Big 12 play since joining the league in 2012.
Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, Gary Patterson's TCU squad is 6-12 in league play.(Photo: Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports)
Big East Conference
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The BCS married computer data with the subjective perceptions of the brain, making them partners in the quest to determine the top two teams. In the end, the computers appeared to be too quirky and opaque, sometimes boosting teams for reasons known only to programmers. For example, one BCS computer ranking recently put Ohio State at No. 5 and Michigan State No. 8, even after MSU beat OSU 34-24 in the Big Ten championship. Apparently the computer didn't watch the game that night.
Big Ten Conference
In the new playoff starting next year, computers will take a back seat to human expertise. The four playoff teams will be determined by a committee, which will consult computer data and human polls but is not bound to follow them.
The also-rans
'We wanted to minimize the importance of the polls and the computers,' Scott said.
The champions of the Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Big East conferences automatically landed a berth in one of the five BCS games and reaped $25 million or more for their conferences. The other six smaller leagues qualified only through nearly flawless play, namely an undefeated season and high ranking, helping to increase the financial disparity between the big conferences and other leagues.
In fiscal 2002, the Big Ten led all leagues with $117 million in revenue, while the lowest-revenue league, the Sun Belt, had just $4.3 million. By 2011, the Big Ten took in $315 million while the lowest-revenue league, the Mountain West, had just $10.9 million - a gap that is largely attributed to regular-season TV rights, though the BCS was a factor, too.
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'We probably had some separation,' said Wright Waters, former commissioner of the Sun Belt and current executive director of the Football Bowl Association. 'Sometimes I wonder if it's healthy.'
But the lower-profile leagues did gain access to big bowls - and larger payouts - that they never did previously. TCU, Boise State, Hawaii and Northern Illinois would not have played in the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls if not for the BCS.
The smaller leagues 'got more access and more money than they ever had before,' Delany said.
Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese once said the Big East failed because it wasn't strong enough in football. A once-proud league with great basketball tradition no longer carries the Big East name in football and has morphed into the newly named American Athletic Conference.
Would it have been different if Big East football teams navigated the BCS era a little better ? If they had dominated the era, would Pittsburgh and Syracuse have bolted for greener pastures, leading to the downfall of Big East football? Big East teams were 8-7 in BCS games and only made appearances in the title game in 2000 and 2001. Those teams, Miami and Virginia Tech, soon left for the ACC.
Despite rolling in television revenue, the Big Ten's money didn't provide much of an advantage on the field, saddling the league with an inferior athletic reputation to the SEC. The Big Ten is 13-15 in BCS games and has only three appearances in the title game, all by Ohio State, which prevailed in one of them.
Without a true playoff, some very good teams were left out of the championship game. In 2003, Southern California finished the regular season ranked No. 1 by the Associated Press media poll and USA TODAY Sports Coaches' Poll but was not selected to play for the BCS title.
In 2004, USC and Oklahoma were undefeated and won spots in the BCS title game, but Auburn and Utah also finished undefeated that season.
'In certain years, there were some questions of whether the best two teams were actually in the game or not,' Scott said. 'By moving to four (teams in a playoff), we took an important step toward the integrity of the champion.'
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