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

[Mark S. Ament]

If a school from a BCS Big 6 conference is in the top 4 and is not the 
conference champion, it automatically qualifies for the BCS - witness 
OSU.  ND has its own rule entirely, as it does for most things.  If ND 
wins 9 games and is in the final top 12, it is considered ( which 
usually means it is chosen) and if it is in the top 6 then it qualifies 
automatically and must be chosen.  Amid all the furor over the Fiesta 
Bowl and Oregon, it has been usually forgotten that both ND and OSU are 
automatic qualifiers and Oregon had no way to make the BCS as there were 
no true at-large slots this year, in the sense that the Bowl officials 
had any leeway in choosing schools.  All the leeway they had was in 
match-ups and with bowl anchors and the order of selection, there was 
very little of that.
Mark


Michael Vance wrote:

> 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
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-- 
Mark

Mark S. Ament
prplehaze at insightbb.com