Bulls247 Board

Generally speaking not good. The BCS contractually obligated bowls to take schools from smaller conferences, BE, to a BCS style bowl. It was a 'greater good' scenario. Going to a 4 team play-off the bowls will now fall under less scrutiny and may be more apt to steer clear of that to insure they can get traditional powers who they know will travel despite not making the playoff. The bowls will be free to contract with the conferences on their own again, and I doubt the Big East will get much play from anyone except maybe the Orange.

This could become a free-for-all, where the conferences and bowls tie-in to one another, and the smaller conferences get left to fend for the scraps. We'd all get a loose allowance to play in the Big 4 Play-off, make the top 4 and you're in, theoretically Boise and TCU have been in that air at the end of the season before so it isn't inconceivable.

There is a potential the rich will get richer....you could see the BCS Conferences like the SEC annually sending a team to this 4 team playoff- in recent years two, and making something asinine like $25MM for their involvement, and then still maintain their tie-ins with the Sugar, Cotton, Outback, Citrus, and possibly another one. Most feel the current BCS bowls, if not part of the playoff format, would still warrant pay-days to conferences in the amount of $15MM, and this is money they WOULDN'T have to split like in BCS days.

The Big East, although from a competition standpoint was foolish, might have made a cagy move with bringing Memphis along. This would insure they'd secure the Fedex Liberty Bowl, because Fedex is HIGHLY supportive of Memphis athletics. The Liberty does pay out like $2.5MM, which is pretty good but in the 3rd tier level out of 4 if you rank it (tier 1 is the BCS, tier two are your Cotton, Outback, and Citrus, tier 3 is Liberty, Insight etc). This is not looking great for the BE, BUT there is some light and we're fortunate in that the BE was invited to the meetings, and if this goes down we need to scramble to secure a national seat at a major bowl like the Orange. If the BCS shrinks to a 4 team playoff and the bigger bowls can go on their own it will be touch and go. If we do that the Big East has a chance, but if we get locked out of a big payday bowl....that will be very painful.