HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- If the "plus-one" playoff model is ultimately rejected, and it will be, leaving college football with at least another six years of status quo, an angry public won't need a posse to find the culprits.

The Pacific 10 and Big Ten conferences, along with the Rose Bowl, already have been identified in wanted posters.

Sports Illustrated recently described the triad as "the axis of obstruction."

"I think it's an interesting label, but it's a caricature," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said Tuesday during a break at the annual meeting of Bowl Championships Series commissioners.

Delany knows how this is going down. There is not going to be a playoff in college football, and he's going to get blamed for it, along with Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen and Rose Bowl Chief Executive Mitch Dorger.

All have staunchly opposed a change in the current BCS system, which in its 10-year history has been controversial, to say the least.

The Rose Bowl, to be clear, is not to blame, although it has received its fair -- or is that unfair? -- share in some media accounts.

"Maybe they've created an impression that doesn't exist," Dorger said.

The Rose Bowl is merely a concerned spectator. It has an opinion but no clout in this playoff fight and will go where the BCS wind blows.

"There are 11 votes and I'm not one of them," Dorger said.

Some at the Rose Bowl might regret ever joining the BCS 10 years ago to help college football patch together some sort of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 title game, but the Rose Bowl is in the BCS to stay.

It will host its annual game in January 2010 and, a week later, the BCS title game.

The Rose Bowl can never go back to the good old days because there are no good old days.

Has the BCS been good for the Rose Bowl?

"That's a great question," Delany said.

His answer was that, overall, it has been a good thing, but that's open to interpretation.

The Rose Bowl's inclusion in the BCS helped assure there would be a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup but it has lost more schools to the cause than it imagined.

Dorger said he was told, based on historical precedent, he could expect to lose an anchor school once ever four years to the BCS title game.

What he never envisioned was USC's hiring Pete Carroll, unemployed at the time, and Ohio State's taking a chance on a coach from Youngstown named Jim Tressel. And those two coaches, almost immediately, taking their schools to the BCS top.

"No one foresaw that coming," Dorger said.