By Blair Kerkhoff, McClatchy Newspapers –
For college football’s everybody-wants-a-playoff crowd, meet Bill Snyder and Bob Stoops.
Two of the game’s most respected coaches said Monday that the fewer changes made to the game’s postseason structure, the better.
“I’m comfortable the way things are now,” said Snyder, beginning his 21st season at Kansas State.
Whatever changes are made, Stoops said he wants no harm to come to bowl games.
“I’m not for a playoff because it would ruin the bowl system, and I don’t think that would be good for the student athletes,” Stoops said.
Several coaches addressed the topic Monday on a Big 12 teleconference in advance of meetings this week of BCS officials in Florida to discuss the sport’s future.
No changes are expected to be announced from the meetings, but sentiment is growing for moving away from the BCS National Championship Game, which matches the top two teams in the final regular-season BCS standings.
Last season, No. 2 Alabama defeated No. 1 LSU for the title in a battle of Southeastern Conference schools.
Stoops’ preference is for a plus-one. The top four teams would meet in BCS bowls, with those games being switched out every two years, and the winners meet in a national championship game.
Several options are being considered by BCS officials, mostly conference commissioners, including a plus-one and a four-team playoff using the bowls or campus sites. Another plan protects the Rose Bowl’s interests and treats the game differently than the other major bowls.
Texas’ Mack Brown is looking for change.
“I hope it’s something different than what we have now,” Brown said.
Brown doesn’t like the two-team limit on the BCS. Last year, Arkansas, which finished sixth in the final BCS standings, couldn’t play in a BCS bowl because LSU and Alabama had taken the league’s spots.
BCS officials have said that whatever else happens in the BCS, that rule is likely to be amended.
After this week’s meeting, the next step is for commissioners to discuss the potential changes with their conference members — presidents, athletic administrators and coaches — at league meetings that take place in May and June.
But from there, things should move quickly, with any format change announced by July 1, to become effective for the 2014 season.
