How the Rose Bowl picks TCU (but Stanford plays in Pasadena)

As I write this, Stanford just beat Oregon State 38-0. Nevada beat Boise State, and Arkansas beat LSU. Everyone expects that tomorrow afternoon, Stanford will be 4th in the BCS rankings. What does this mean for what Bowl Game Stanford will show up for?

Summary: There's a scenario, that I think is somewhat likely, where: the Rose Bowl will pick TCU, thereby satisfying its contractual obligations, but on January 1st, Stanford will be playing in Pasadena. I'm sorry if this post is long, but I want to be precise so you'll believe this conclusion.

Everyone's been saying a lot. Don't trust them. Go read the rules for yourself. BCS Selection Procedures. Yeah, they're written in lawyer-ese (but it's actually bad lawyer-ese, as we'll get to). But you need to read it. Not all right now. But I'll be referring to it over the course of this argument.

People have been focusing on a few clauses. Let's recap the situation, but with talk about them:

6. If any of the 10 slots remain open after application of provisions 1 through 5, and if no team qualifies under paragraph No. 5 and an at-large team from a conference with an annual automatic berth for its champion is ranked No. 4 in the final BCS Standings, that team will become an automatic qualifier provided that no at-large team from the same conference qualifies for the national championship game.

This is what people mean when they say "Top 4 teams are guaranteed a BCS game." For example, on ESPN's (excellent) PAC-10 blog, Ted Miller says "All the Cardinal need is to push into the top 4 of the final BCS standings. That would guarantee it an automatic berth, per BCS rules." He's referring to this Paragraph 6.

So, if Paragraph 6 is all that mattered, the Rose Bowl would pick Stanford and all would be Right With The World. But then there's this:

For the games of January 2011 through 2014, the first year the Rose Bowl loses a team to the NCG and a team from the non-AQ group is an automatic qualifier, that non-AQ team will play in the Rose Bowl.

[For this paragraph, AQ group means a team in a BCS conference or Notre Dame. Yes, Notre Dame is explicitly special. Thus, non-AQ group means a team from a second-tier conference. TCU (and Boise State) fall into this group.]

Well, if Oregon wins out, the Rose Bowl will lose the Ducks to the NCG. TCU will be #3 and an Automatic Qualifier. Therefore, by this paragraph, TCU will go the Rose Bowl.

And this is where everyone's analysis has stopped.

But scroll down a little more. To the section "Team Selections Procedure", Paragraph 5. It says:

After completion of the selection process as described in Paragraph Nos. 1-4, the conferences and Notre Dame may, but are not required to, adjust the pairings [...]

At this point in the process, we are expecting that the process will have assigned:

• Rose Bowl: TCU vs. Big-10 Champion
• Some Other Bowl: Stanford vs. Other team

So, the Rose Bowl will have selected its non-AQ team, as required.

But, would TCU rather play in the Rose Bowl? Or would it rather play in Glendale (Fiesta), New Orleans (Sugar), or Miami (Orange) Bowl?

And even if TCU preferred to play in the Rose Bowl, the paragraph says that the deciders are not TCU, but "the conferences and Notre Dame". The Pac-10 would rather have Stanford in the Rose Bowl than in some other Bowl Game, and the other conferences are probably apathetic. If anything, most conferences would rather play TCU (I'm not sure if you've heard, but the Orthodoxy of College Football says that TCU is a joke, propelled heavenward only by a laughable schedule).

Will this happen? I don't know. Could it? Yes.

[Non-lawyer, non-pedantic readers: stop reading this blog post here.]

OK, if you've made it to this paragraph, you're either a lawyer or pedantic (or both).

Could this happen? Maybe. The problem is: the BCS procedure is self-contradictory.

The Rose Bowl Paragraph says: "that non-AQ team will play in the Rose Bowl."[emphasis mine]

But Paragraph 5 says: "the conferences and Notre Dame may [] adjust the pairings." So, which is it? WILL that team play in the Rose Bowl? Or MAY the conferences adjust the pairings? At least one of these sentences must be broken. If two clauses in a contract contradict, which survives? I'm not sure. But if it's the latter, then Stanford can go to the Rose Bowl, and the Rose Bowl won't be handicapped in the future.

Don't get me wrong. The BCS is about as stable as Element 113. The procedure is described in excruciating, legalistic degail (that, as we've seen, is ambiguous. So some lawyer somewhere is getting whipped by his partner tonight). But it survives only so long as the BCS survives. And the BCS stays awake at night, shivering and scared of the Sword of Damocles that is Anti-Trust Suits against the Nepotistic BCS. So maybe a court would say, the Rose Bowl could do this, and the Rose Bowl will decide that discretion is the better part of their valor.

But, you have to think that Larry Scott is considering how many times this week he'll be speed dialing Pasadena, right?