BCS adds additional bowl game

PHOENIX – The Fiesta Bowl organization was awarded the first national college football championship game under the new, expanded Bowl Championship Series format on Tuesday, and the BCS schools worked to find a new poll to help select the teams that will play in the title game.

Beginning in the 2006 season, there will be a new game to determine the BCS national champion, a contest separate from the four existing BCS bowls – the Fiesta, Orange, Sugar and Rose. In essence, it means that two more schools will qualify for a BCS contest.

As is the case under the current system, the teams that finish first and second in the BCS rankings will play for the championship.

The first title game under the new format will be played Jan. 8, 2007, at the Arizona Cardinals’ new stadium set to open in the fall of 2006 in Glendale, Ariz. The Fiesta Bowl will be played in the same stadium a week earlier, on Jan. 1. The stadium also will be the site of the 2008 Super Bowl.

The formal announcement of the Fiesta selection came only hours after Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano signed legislation that would require the stadium authority to grant use of the new facility for college football. The bill also turns sales tax revenue from ticket sales and other transactions of the BCS games over to the Fiesta Bowl.

The provisions will mean about $1.75 million in revenue, Fiesta Bowl executive director John Junker said.

BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg, commissioner of the Big 12 Conference, stopped short of saying the Fiesta would have been bypassed had the bill not become law.

“But clearly we would have some questions that would have to be answered about the financial commitments the Fiesta Bowl had made to us,” Weiberg said.

The announcement means the sites for the championship game will continue in their current rotation – Fiesta, Sugar, Orange and Rose. In all cases, the sites will host the national title game a week after their regular bowl games.

The second of the three days of BCS meetings centered on finding a replacement for The Associated Press poll as part of the formula to determine the two teams that play for the championship.

Weiberg said that while other more radical changes aren’t off the table, simply replacing the AP poll seems to be the preferred alternative of the BCS schools.

As of the end of last season, The AP withdrew permission for using its poll in the BCS calculations. That left the ESPN-USA Today coaches’ poll as the lone human-voting poll.

The BCS has promised a decision on the new formula by July 15, but Weiberg said it could be done sooner. Discussions will be held over the next two weeks to try to resolve the poll issues.