Story by Kevin Spain
New Orleans Times-Picayune
April 4, 2006

The NCAA Tournament is one of the most watched sporting
events because in almost any game the underdog can knock
off the favorite.

Mixing the mid-majors with the schools from the power
conferences has made for excitement and surprises, and
gives the tournament high ratings throughout.

Unfortunately, the school presidents haven't seen the light
on football, according to NCAA president Myles Brand. He
told reporters that presidents of the 11 Division I-A
conferences have shown no inclination toward a football
tournament.

"Will we see in the short run a movement toward a
tournament of I-A football? I doubt it very much, although
I don't think it's closed," Brand said. "Would we move, for
example, a four plus one (one game added to the four BCS
bowls)? It's possible. I think some discussions may take
place. I doubt very much we'll move to a large-scale
tournament in any case. Twelve games of regular season make
that a difficult thing to do."

One of the arguments over the years against a football
playoff has been athletes missing class time. Brand
dismisses that argument.

"The sport that misses the least amount of classes is
football," he said. "I mean, you're home half the time.
It's one game a week. The sport that misses the most is
golf or maybe tennis. A lot of traveling goes on there. In
basketball, it's probably on the heavier side, a little
past middle, but not in the extreme."

http://tinyurl.com/l35tz



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com