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

[John Labbe]

In fact, Notre Dame doesn't have its own rule for either of the things you suggest below.

1) If ANY team finishes with 9 wins and is in the top 12, it may be considered for a BCS bid.  Of course, for Notre Dame that will almost always mean that it will be chosen, while that is not so for other teams.

2) If ANY non-BCS conference team finishes in the top 6, it automatically gets an at-large bid.  There is a bit of a Notre Dame provision here, however, in that if any team other than ND so qualifies, then ND shall also be considered for selection under this provision, so long as it finishes in the top 10 or has 9 wins.  For example, if Toledo were 5th, Fresno State 6th, and Notre Dame 10th, then the BCS would be able to pick which 2 of those 3 to take.  That just means that Notre Dame can't be automatically closed out of the BCS in the rare event that 2 other non-BCS teams finish in the top 6, when ND does not.

3) Only after dealing with any possible automatic bids provided by the previous provision does a top-4 BCS non-conference champion team get an automatic bid.  The top-6 non-BCS team rule takes priority over this rule

See the rules for yourself at

http://www.bcsfootball.org/index2.cfm?page=standards

Suffice it to say, the rules are written such that as long as Notre Dame has 9 wins and finishes in the top 12, no "automatic" bid rule can serve to foreclose ND from consideration.  But other teams are also entitled to automatic at-large bids under most circumstances.





On Tuesday, December 06, 2005, at 06:45PM, Mark S. Ament <prplehaze at insightbb.com> wrote:

>
>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
>
>
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