IN MY OPINION

Column by Sam McKewon / World-Herald staff writer

LINCOLN — Plus One, plus-one, +1. The new favored flavor of playoff solutions for college football. No. 4 plays No. 1. No. 3 plays No. 2. The winners tangle a week later in mid-January.

"Consideration should become more serious as we move forward," interim Big 12 Commissioner Chuck Neinas told ESPN on Monday. Boise State coach Chris Petersen agreed.

This little four-team showdown should happen. It keeps intact the Bowl Championship Series structure. It furthers the important illusion to well-heeled boosters and loyal fans that bowls not in the mini-playoff bear some resemblance to the ones that are. And it solves the Alabama/Oklahoma State dilemma.

Harvey Perlman is not moved. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln chancellor is back on the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee (he took the spot vacated by Penn State's Graham Spanier after the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke in Happy Valley) and he's still bullish on the current system — with perhaps one caveat.

But that caveat doesn't have anything to do with advocating a Plus One model.

"It doesn't have very much traction," Perlman said Monday afternoon in that matter-of-fact voice of his, the one that sounds like a golfer already in the clubhouse with a significant lead. "A Plus One isn't going to end controversy."

His arguments, which I suspect are already burned into the minds of BCS critics:

• A Plus One is still a playoff, Perlman said, that simply pushes the BCS debate from Alabama against Oklahoma State to No. 4 Stanford vs. No. 5 Oregon. The Ducks beat the Cardinal for the Pac-12 title.

"The president who has the most interest in a Plus One is the president whose university finishes third," Perlman said.

In a Tuesday interview with the Chicago Tribune, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany agreed.

"Our view is we'd like to stay where we are," Delany said. "We do believe in the slippery-slope theory."

My take: If we lived with the tension of debating No. 2 vs. No. 3 in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2011, we could live with the diminished tension of No. 4 vs. No. 5.

The bigger question: Does a mini-playoff open the door for hat-in-hand conferences like the Sun Belt to definitively make the "antitrust" charge stick? I've always believed that, if college football even sniffed a playoff, demands for an equitable decision process would be swift and unrelenting. That would lead to a schism in Division I and deeper Congressional inquiry over tax-exempt status.

• A Plus One is not fan-friendly. Who can really afford back-to-back trips to bowl games? Perlman asks. Who's going to travel around the country two weeks in a row? Perlman sticks to this argument like milk gravy to your ribs.

My take: Plenty of people would go. The end.

The bigger question: Are schools going to be stuck with selling tickets on six days' notice, or will the bowls, with their considerable piles of cash, work harder to put rumps in seats?

• A Plus One may not be feasible. The NCAA Division I Football Bowl Licensing Task Force — Perlman's part of that, too — recently recommended that bowls be conducted in a three-week window; after all final exams are complete and before second-semester classes start. A Plus One requires an extra week into January.

My take: Ditch the in-season bye week for teams, move the league championships to the week after Thanksgiving and play two Plus One games — at rotating sites — during the first week in December. Slot the bowls after those games.

The bigger question: Does it matter that much if teams play an extra game in December? How sacred are those days after Thanksgiving for rivalry games?

• The whole season is a playoff, Perlman insists. Even if, well, Alabama wasn't knocked out of it by losing to LSU the first time.

"Most commentators think LSU and Alabama are the two best teams," Perlman said. "... I'm sorry Oklahoma State got beat by Iowa State, but they did."

My take: LSU and Alabama are, indeed, the two best teams, and a Plus One, frankly, would have only confirmed it. But what a lovely bit of confirmation.

The bigger question: Is there enough of a groundswell among university presidents for a Plus One to make it stick?

"I don't sense any enthusiasm," Perlman said. "But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be looked at. They could convince us."

Now the caveat: Perlman, Delany and many others are willing to look at dissolving automatic bids outside of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. The BCS rewarded No. 23 West Virginia with a bid to the Orange Bowl for winning the Big East while conference champions ranked ahead of the Mountaineers — TCU and Southern Mississippi — got a proverbial set of steak knives.

The strongest BCS defenders will insist that its primary job is to pit the top teams against each other. But the phrase "BCS Conference" didn't worm its way into college football vernacular because of the No. 1/No. 2 matchup. You even hear the term in college basketball, where it's utterly out of place.

Perlman hears the BCS detractors. I'm one of them — mild, not spicy. Where BCS critics see cronyism, Perlman sees a workable system that does what the Rose Bowl prevented in 1991, 1994, 1996 and 1997: a national title game.

Ohio State only gets to hoist the Sears Trophy in 2002 because the BCS created a chance for the Buckeyes to beat "unstoppable" Miami; otherwise, OSU suffers the same fate that Penn State did in 1994. No chance. Not that it makes Oklahoma State feel any better about it.

"We're happy to be investigated by anyone who wants to," Perlman said. "We're as transparent as we can be."

So chew on a Plus One model. And, in the meantime, reveal those secret computer formulas.

Contact the writer:

402-202-9766, sam.mckewon@owh.com

twitter.com/swmckewonOWH

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