[NU Sports] Well, I hope you're right Alan! :)

[Michael Vance]

At 12/5/2005 09:21 PM, SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\) wrote:
>If they went by the numbers and not the
>name, I think it's pretty clear Oregon or Auburn would
>be in Tempe ahead of the Irish.

Years like this really underscore the preferential treatment that ND 
gets.  There is a rule about BCS schools in the top 6 automatically getting 
a BCS bowl bid, but I believe (and I may be wrong) that ND gets special 
treatment in this rule.  If I'm correct, the bowls didn't have a choice of 
which two schools out of the three top-6 non-champion teams (dOSU, Oregon, 
ND) to take.  Even though they were the lowest-ranked of the three, I think 
that ND got it automatically and it was a matter of which team between dOSU 
and Oregon would fill the remaining spot.

Granted, the economic realities of ND on TV would have made the result the 
same even if they did have free choice among all three.  But if that's the 
case, why write the contract so that it favors ND in the first place?  At 
least be honest about it and say, "We're taking Notre Dame because they'll 
make more money for us," instead of, "We're only taking Notre Dame over 
Oregon because the BCS contract says we have to."  Who wrote/agreed to the 
contract?

-Michael