BCS Reflecting on Its Changes

College football officials meeting here this week have got everything figured out about upcoming changes in the bowl championship series system except:

What do they call it? How do they sell it? Will it work? And, will anyone understand it?

The 11 conference commissioners who run the sport have only ruled out the line from Monty Python’s skit ... and now for something completely different.

“The fundamental format needs explanation,” Mike Slive, Southeastern Conference commissioner and incoming BCS coordinator, said Monday after the first day of BCS spring meetings.

There will not be a playoff, or anything close to it, but there will be a face-lift.

In a deal worked out long before last year actually turned out well, with No. 1 USC and No. 2 Texas meeting for an undisputed title, the 8-year-old BCS will have a new look.

Instead of four BCS bowls there will be five, with each of the BCS bowls taking turns playing host to two games in the same year during a four-year rotation.

The Fiesta Bowl is first up and will play host to the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 1 and then, a week later, the BCS national title game in the same stadium.

Even that stadium has changed, though, as the Fiesta readies to move from Sun Devil Stadium to a $455-million complex in Glendale, Ariz., that will feature a retractable roof and a retractable field.

Fox takes over broadcast rights for three of the four bowls, with the Rose Bowl still on ABC.

What will the games be called? Fiesta Bowl I and Fiesta Bowl II? Does the BCS have a name for its new title game?

“We will before we leave here,” Slive said.

Will the format work?

“If it works well, that’s fine,” Slive said, “but I think we don’t know yet how it is going to work.”

The Fiesta Bowl’s turn in the “double-host” format will be followed in subsequent years by the Sugar, Orange and Rose bowls.

Double-hosting was adopted to appease “non-BCS” schools that thought they were being denied access to lucrative bowl games.

The new system creates an additional game and two more “at-large” berths, for a total of four, to add to the six automatic berths afforded BCS conference champions.

Last season, a school from one of the five “non-BCS” conferences had to finish ranked in the top six to earn an automatic major-bowl berth.

Starting next year, a non-BCS team with a top-12 ranking will earn an automatic berth. A non-BCS team also would get in if it is ranked in the top 15 and a BCS champion is ranked No. 16 or worse.

This actually happened last year when Texas Christian of the Mountain West finished No. 14 in the BCS and Florida State, rated No. 22, won the Atlantic Coast Conference title.

Had the new conditions applied, Texas Christian would have qualified for a BCS game.

Had next year’s BCS formula been applied to last year’s games, the bowl rotation would have looked this way:

BCS title game: USC vs. Texas.

Rose Bowl: Oregon vs. Penn State.

Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame vs. Texas Christian.

Sugar Bowl: Georgia vs. West Virginia.

Orange Bowl: Florida State vs. Ohio State.