Bowl Alliance Set for ’92 Season : College football: Backers settle many details of a complicated system designed to improve chances of determining a national champion.

Members of the often fragile bowl alliance, which was considered a 50-50 proposition at best a month ago, announced Thursday that the coalition lives and will begin operation in time for the 1992 football season.

If all goes well, the alliance’s complicated plan will drastically change the way bowl matchups are arranged and, depending on the circumstances, the way national championships are decided.

The announcement came after 11 months of intense negotiations, and one day after the Big East and Atlantic Coast conferences turned down an offer from the Blockbuster Bowl to bolt the alliance in favor of a long-term, multimillion-dollar deal. In the end, the two cornerstone conferences agreed that the idea of improving the bowl selection process, thus lessening the cry for a national playoff, was worth the gamble.

Once-nervous alliance co-members welcomed the Big East and ACC’s decision.

“The reason we did this was because we felt this was the best thing . . . for college football,” Orange Bowl President Harper Davidson said.

It might also be the best thing for the bowls themselves. After all, there was growing criticism of a bowl system that chose teams weeks before the selection date, which supposedly carried a $250,000 penalty. The bowls also were blamed for a process that had seen two teams share the national championship in each of the last two seasons.

“We’ve created the opportunity for a No. 1 vs. No. 2 (game),” said Gene Corrigan, Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner.

There are plenty of details to be worked out, but the essence of the nine-year deal (subject to review every three years) is this:

--Four bowls (Orange, Cotton, Sugar and Fiesta), five conference champions (ACC, Southeastern, Southwest, Big East and Big Eight) and one independent (Notre Dame) will make up the core group of the alliance. The alliance bowls will have to pay a minimum of $3 million to each participating team.

--Of those eight available bowl berths, the Big Eight champion automatically will go to the Orange, the Southeastern champion to the Sugar and the Southwest champion to the Cotton. Under most circumstances, the Atlantic Coast and Big East champions will play in one of those three bowls.

The exception would be if, say, the ACC and Big East champions were ranked Nos. 1 and 2 in the Associated Press poll at regular season’s end. Then those two teams would be required to play in the Fiesta Bowl. The same would hold true if Notre Dame were No. 1 and the Big East or ACC champion were No. 2. Or vice versa.

--The bowl whose host team is the highest-ranked champion will choose an opposing team first.

For instance, last season that would have been the Sugar Bowl, because SEC champion Florida was ranked the highest (No. 5) among host teams. Using the alliance formula, the Sugar could have drafted No. 1 Miami (remember, the Hurricanes were tied to no bowl).

--The Pacific-10 Conference’s designated No. 2 team will be part of the alliance mix. The Pac-10, along with the designated No. 2 teams from the Southwest, Big Eight, Big East and ACC, will be guaranteed bowl berths, but not necessarily in a core group bowls.

If things go as hoped, the Pac-10 selectee probably would play in the Fiesta during most years.

Still to be determined is the future of the Southeastern Conference’s designated No. 2 team. The Citrus Bowl has offered the SEC a deal that would place that conference’s No. 2 team against the No. 2 Big Ten finisher.

And what happens to the ambitious Blockbuster Bowl, which had offered the Big East and ACC a 10-year deal with an annual payout of $4.3 million to each of those conference’s champions? Can it coexist with the nearby Orange Bowl, or does the Blockbuster call it quits in a year or two?

And finally, what bowls will be signed to complement the four core bowls? These so-called “secondary bowls” are vital to the alliance.

“I think once this is all done, you might see additional negotiations with third-place teams,” Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen said. “Ultimately, you may see a much cleaner and better bowl selection process.”