Bill Hancock Defends the BCS, Politely

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Bill Hancock even gets blamed for the weather.

When the gametime temperature at January's Orange Bowl in Miami dipped to a record-low 49 degrees, Hancock says that too became part of the list of things his organization should have done better.

That it's uncertain whether or not that was a joke might tell you how hard life can sometimes be for Hancock, the director of college football's heavily maligned BCS.

There are almost certainly worse jobs in the world than directing sports' most vilified postseason: animal carcass removal, Spinal Tap drummer, whomever produces "The Hills," but there may be none more contentious than defending the three-letter system that has become a four-letter epithet to many sports fans.

"Lots of people have an opportunity to talk to people who disagree with me," Hancock said. "Some close their minds to that and yell. I think when you disagree with someone, you engage in a dialogue. And it's not always unpleasant. Maybe neither one of you changes your opinion, but we have a story to tell."

In the buildup to college football season, Hancock is having plenty of conversations at conference media days. They're called interview sessions, but that's perhaps an interview in the way a hungry lion might interview a gazelle.



After all, the college football playoff debate has echoed everywhere from Keokuk to Congress. Even President Barack Obama has taken a turn as the BCS basher-in-chief, twice publicly calling for a playoff.

And as the face of the BCS, it's Hancock who's getting mustaches and devil horns drawn on.

Quick with a smile and quicker with a handshake, Hancock, 59, seems an unlikely candidate for the face of an organization with a reputation only slightly less sullied than BP, not to mention him sitting through debates that might've made Job go WWE.

"I believe that you have to listen," Hancock said. "I'd much rather listen than talk, and there was a long time where the BCS folks didn't take enough time to tell our story. It'll take some educating before people get it as much as we'd like for them to, but we're absolutely making progress."

For Hancock, maintaining the BCS is not simply an issue of bowl games, though he supports college football's expansive postseason as what he calls a "reward" for the teams' seasons, but it's the regular season he says he hopes to keep vibrant.

It's easy to argue how much reward there is in a week in a Boise winter for the Humanitarian Bowl, but it's difficult to argue Hancock's sincerity.

"The regular season is so awesome," Hancock says. "Changing anything is such a risk. If you change, you can't get it back.

"I worry about what's happened with college basketball, with the energy going out of the regular season and into the postseason. College football has the most compelling and interesting regular season in sports. That's something to treasure and protect."

Hancock grew up in the heart of football country in Hobart, Oklahoma, a small dot of a town on the Midwestern plains and spent most of his life in collegiate athletics, including a 13-year stint as director of the Final Four. Hancock joined the BCS as administrator in 2005 because he says he believes in the BCS as much as he does the more popularly accepted Final Four.

Despite his pedigree, and the fact that he's so universally liked among the college community that a Google search on his name might suggest you search "good guy" instead, he's received plenty of advice on how to do his job.

Hancock said he receives fan submissions almost every day on how a playoff should work and argued against most iterations at the ACC preseason football media days Monday.
"I worry about what's happened with college basketball, with the energy going out of the regular season and into the postseason. College football has the most compelling and interesting regular season in sports. That's something to treasure and protect."
-- Bill Hancock, BCS director
The problem with the plus-one system, which would essentially create a four-team playoff, is that an expansion of the bracket is inevitable, Hancock said, citing men's college basketball as well as the NFL and Major League Baseball as examples.

"No bracket has ever stayed where it started," he said. "Many [conference] commissioners would like four, but they know it wouldn't stay at four. At eight or 12 or 16, you get to the point where the regular season doesn't matter."

The issue of shortchanging smaller conferences like the Mountain West and WAC, which have each put teams into BCS bowls in recent years but do not have an automatic bid, is actually a strength of the system, Hancock says.

"The BCS may be best thing to happen to Boise State," Hancock said. "That gave them a forum to go play Oklahoma [in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl], which would have never happened [without the BCS]."

Hancock also disputed the idea that regular seasons are meaningless outside of the power conferences.

"[Non-BCS teams] can qualify for an automatic spot in the BCS by finishing in the top 12 or can be an automatic qualifier in top 14, and if not there's still a chance to make bowl season."

Hancock knows that in the court of public opinion, for now at least, a nice guy is finishing last.

Popular support exists for playoffs, as are held in college football's FCS division and in basketball, and for an avenue for teams like Boise State, which finished undefeated in 2006 and 2009, and Utah, which was undefeated in 2008 after beating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, to have a chance to play for a championship. The Utes also finished undefeated in 2004.

Hancock returns that there have been changes to make the arrangement more egalitarian. The BCS system has changed its criteria over the years and allows better access for non-automatic qualifiers. Six such teams have played in the BCS bowls in the six years, matching the number from the past half century.

The Mountain West, too, is in "good position" to earn a seventh bid at the end of the current cycle that runs through 2013, Hancock said, though the shuffling of Utah and Boise will affect the league's cumulative records. Even the Rose Bowl, the fussy granddaddy of them all, will be required to take a non-automatic qualifier this season if a Big Ten or Pac-10 team is involved in the national championship game.

But the unpopularity of the BCS persists.

Even for that complaint, Hancock has an answer. He believes that's in part because the BCS simply hasn't put its message out there.

So Hancock continues his tour, smiling in the face of those who complain about everything from the bowl dates to bad popcorn.

"The fact is we have a story to tell," Hancock said, "we're proud of it and we're thriving."

Even if they haven't yet figured out how to control the weather.