Editor's Note: This is the third in a four-part series examining the present and future state of the Bowl Championship Series.
Last fall, Tulane President Scott Cowen considered dropping his university's football team from the ranks of Division I-A. Now he is leading the fight against the Bowl Championship Series.
Cowen, whose Green Wave football team remains a member of Conference USA, recently helped form the Presidential Coalition for Athletics Reform, a 46-school panel of non-BCS conference university presidents, chancellors and superintendents whose goal is to gain access to and equity in college football's postseason.
Ohio President Robert Glidden is one of 11 participants from Mid-American Conference schools. The only MAC schools without a representative in the Coalition are Akron, Buffalo and Eastern Michigan.
Cowen formed the Coalition after Tulane finished an extensive review of its athletics department and found that, despite fielding winning teams and posting one of the best student-athlete graduation rates in the NCAA, it was still losing money. This discovery led Cowen to what he sees as an even bigger problem: The negative impact of the BCS on Division I-A athletics.
During his testimony at a hearing last month before the United States House of Representatives, Cowen said that the BCS is fraught with potential antitrust issues that have kept 52 Division I-A football teams, including Tulane, from access to a major bowl game or the opportunity to compete for a national title.
Each fall
I remind [my football team] that as athletes they are at Tulane to be as competitive as they can be he said in the hearing. I cannot tell them that they will have a realistic chance to play for a national title. Because the truth is
when it comes to Division I-A football in a non-BCS school
no matter how well these young men play
they will have virtually no access to major bowls or championship play.
Cowen also said that Division I-A football is the only NCAA sport whose postseason does not consist of some sort of tournament.
In other sports
all of which have a playoff system in place
every Division I-A team starts out on a level playing field
Cowen said in the hearing.
Cowen also spoke out against new requirements for membership in Division I-A athletics, including an increase in the number of home games that must be scheduled against other Division I-A opponents.
Another new requirement -
said Debbie Grant, vice president for communications at Tulane. This is something very near and dear to his heart.
