U-Ga. Leader Urges NCAA To Use Playoff

A day after Louisiana State beat Ohio State in the Bowl Championship Series title game, University of Georgia President Michael F. Adams, the chairman of the NCAA Executive Committee, sent a letter to NCAA President Myles Brand proposing an eight-team playoff for division I-A college football because he feels the BCS and the forces that propel it are "undercutting sportsmanship and integrity of the game."

Adams said university presidents need to take back control of the postseason from television networks and conferences that, in his view, hold too much power.

Adams's proposal called for eight teams to be seeded by a selection committee in the same manner as college basketball. Adams hopes the NCAA will implement his idea, or some form of it, with two or three years, and he said he has received support from other presidents, including some from the Big Ten and Pacific-10 conferences. The BCS's contract with Fox runs through the 2009 season.

Yesterday, in an interview on XM Radio, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany strongly opposed any playoff system and stressed that his conference's relationship to the Rose Bowl is most important to him.

"It may well be that people are open-minded," Delany said. "It would be disingenuous for me to say I'm open-minded about it if I'm not."

-- Adam Kilgore