Paterno voices support for major college football playoff
PITTSBURGH – Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is lobbying again for a Division I-A football playoff, calling the reasons against it “bogus” less than three weeks after the Bowl Championship Series decided to maintain its current format for the foreseeable future.
The 81-year-old coach said Thursday he doubts if a playoff system would be enacted soon, particularly after a May 5 meeting of the 11 Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and Notre Dame’s athletic director ended with a decision to keep the current system and begin negotiations with the television networks.
“I don’t think so right now, and I don’t know why,” said Paterno, who is entering his 43rd season as Penn State’s head coach. “I’m only going to be a head coach another 10 or 15 years, and I don’t think it will happen by then.”
Paterno, whose contract runs through the upcoming season but has not been extended, laughed at his own joke.
Paterno’s pro-playoff stance differs from that of the Big Ten, which has long opposed a playoff. At the May 5 meeting, only the Atlantic Coast and Southeastern conference commissioners favored a system proposed by SEC commissioner Mike Slive that would have seeded the top four teams into two BCS bowls and had the two winners meet a week later for the BCS championship game. The BCS bowls are the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta.
philly.com
5/22/08
