This is in response to Rick Bay's recent article endorsing a Division I-A football playoff. An excerpt from that article appeared in the March 27 issue of The NCAA News.

Having experienced an NFL-type football playoff in Division I-AA as a coach and the Rose Bowl and Citrus Bowl as an athletics administrator, I will take the bowl system any day. The current Bowl Championship Series system allows for the best to play the best while still protecting the regular season and making it possible for more than 40 teams and 3,300 athletes to have a bowl experience.

Without question, a four-team playoff as has been proposed by some will quickly prove to be the gateway to an eight-, 12- or 16-team playoff. If that were to happen, we soon would see the demise of the bowl system as we now know it, and even the most casual fan could predict which schools would dominate the playoff structure from year to year.

We must remember that football is not a sport that lends itself easily to a tournament format. Teams in a playoff would be unwilling and unable to arrive at the game site days in advance. Extraordinarily valuable cultural experiences, community interaction and financial impact on the local economy would be lost were teams and their followers unable to experience "bowl week."

Playoffs would most likely eviscerate the regular season and the current emphasis on playing for the conference championship. In reality, a second loss, whenever it came, would for all practical purposes end postseason opportunities were we not to have the existing bowl system behind the BCS.

Bowl games also provide the pageantry, color, excitement and tradition of college football, which delineates us from the professional game. Since 1990, 85 of 112 (75.9 percent) NCAA Division I-A schools have been to a bowl game. Why would we want to fool around with anything so successful and inclusive?

Last year, Christine Brennan of USA Today articulated the real worth of bowl games:

"Aren't bowl games supposed to be a celebration? Aren't we talking about 18- to 23-year-old kids here? What's wrong with having people argue about who is No. 1, which always has been three-fourths the fun in the flawed-but-wonderful world of college football? Must we resolve everything in sports so the sponsors and networks are happy while all but one group of players goes home less than satisfied?"

And finally, from an admittedly parochial view, why would the Big Ten want to give up the Rose Bowl? Quite frankly, we have no intention of relinquishing, assigning or delegating the authority, direction or policy-making over bowl games or revenue to the NCAA or any other third party.

Rick Taylor
Director of Athletics
Northwestern University