NCAA puts the brakes on its playoff express

Sporting News, The, June 13, 1994 by Ivan Maisel

Several weeks ago, we marveled at how the NCAA can take years to decide how many times a coach can call a recruit but planned to pull the playoff trigger in a matter of weeks.

That possibility apparently died last week when the NCAA figured out the inherent silliness of rushing into such a big decision. A special committee to study a playoff plan delayed its recommendation past the deadline for 1995 NCAA Convention legislation.

In other words, there will be no playoff in the immediate future.

Short of saying it had no interest in a playoff, the committee had no choice but to delay. The playoff is the biggest decision, financially and structurally, that NCAA members will make in years. Yet the special playoff committee had been asked to develop a bulletproof plan in two meetings over a five-week span.

The suspicions of athletic officials unwilling to wean themselves from the mother's milk of bowl cash stretched from here to the Super Bowl. What's the format? How much money? More important, who gets it? What about the increase in pressure and workload on the players?

Syracuse Athletic Director Jake Crouthamel, a member of the special committee, says the group found that the more work it did, the more work it created.

"We haven't answered the questions," he says. "We've identified the questions." A few of the committee members say the emotion that entered the debate obscured their work.

"The whole membership is reacting to, 'Do you want a championship or not?'" Crouthamel says. "That's not what our charge was. Our charge was to develop something people could react to in a totally informed environment."

Oklahoma Athletic Director Donnie Duncan was report of a four-member research group that pulled together data showing the sport has stagnated in the television marketplace, especially compared to college basketball. Duncan, a former head coach and bowl executive director, derided the playoff idea a year ago. Now he endorses it because of the money he says is available.

"How many of you could walk out that door and walk away from (an extra) $500,000?" Duncan asked his fellow College Football Association members at a forum last week in Dallas. Duncan says the playoff would bring much more than a half-million dollars to his school and others. But too many questions remain for that money to be forthcoming any time soon.

A step backward

Last January, the NCAA President Commission appointed a special committee to study Proposition 16, the increase in eligibility standards that was scheduled to take effect in the fall of 1995. The commission did so only to protect itself from the pressure being applied by the Black Coaches Association and the Congressional Black Caucus.

The move may have backfired last week when the special committee indicated it would recommend that Prop 16 standards be delayed and softened. The delay had been expected and was an acceptable compromise. But it will be interesting to see how the presidents react to backing off the tougherstandards issue.

Exactly how the standards will be softened has not been made public. The special committee wants to make its presentation to the presidents in person before releasing its findings. But the presidents Commission apparently has two choices: Take a public step backward, which presidents don't like to do, or incite the minority community again.

Working overtime

If you don't get a playoff, don't despair. You might get overtime instead.

Division I-A is the only football division that does not utilize the NCAA tiebreaker. John Adams, the Western Athletic Conference chief of officials and the editor of the football rules book, says he believes the tiebreaker is coming.

According to a coaches survey taken by the NCAA Football Rules Committee, 45 percent of I-A coaches favor the idea. Under a tiebreaker, each team gets the ball on the opponent's 25-yard line an equal number of times and play continues until one team scores more points.

What is surprising about Adams' revelation is that the Big Ten - the staid, stodgy Big Ten - has asked the rules committee to make the change. First Wisconsin goes to the Rose Bowl, then this. Is that league loose from its moorings?

Ivan Maisel covers college football for Newsday.