"I've answered the playoff question on numerous occasions. First of all, there's been no directive from college presidents and chancellors to ask us to research creating a playoff structure. We haven't spent any time looking at playoff models or adding games to the postseason in a way to make it look like a playoff structure. College football comprises nearly 120 teams. It's not a 32-team, NFL-type structure. We have problems and challenges associated if we were to create a playoff with where playoff games would occur. Would we shorten the regular season in order to play games leading into final exams, take a break and then come back and finish it afterward. It's a sport where there are 85 scholarship players. The NFL has numerous replacement (free agent) players who can fill out a roster.

"There are issues relative to the number of games you can play. College presidents in the Big 12 have been consistent in saying if we get to a 15- or 16-game structure, we're beyond where we should be with college football. A 12-game regular season with the opportunity for a conference championship game and a single postseason bowl game is where most presidents and chancellors have been at this point. The bowl system rewards 56 of those approximately 120 teams. A playoff structure would erode the base of the bowls. There's a tremendous difference between a playoff structure and a bowl structure."

"I like [the BCS system] the way it is-I really do. They've tweaked the BCS every year. That's all right, so long as we know what the rules are when the season begins. I think there's enough integrity in those human polls that I think everybody's gonna vote what they think is most fair."

"I think people are looking for a perfect system and there isn't a perfect system. We've never had that in college football. I've always been in favor of the polls being the most important factor. You usually don't see too much out of line week to week with the polls. It's rare that you get a situation like we had last year, and when you do get those circumstances somebody's going to have a good argument. It still goes back to human opinions more than a computation. I think the idea that they are making the BCS system simpler is good."

"The system, even though it has things that people question, is better than it was the old way, before the BCS. I think it̉s set and stable now, where therẻll be less and less controversy every year."

"I feel very strongly about the BCS format. It allows for great interest and fan following and allows for the great tradition of the bowls to continue."

"I'm not for a playoff. You have to go undefeated. A playoff would be interesting, but I think it would be too many games."

"I'm a BCS guy. It has done so many good things for college football all the way around. Once in awhile, if there are dual national champions, so what? I don't know how that is harmful. In some ways, it leaves more people feeling good. Everyone wants the so-called 'perfect system.' But it's awfully hard to come up with it."

"I think college football has the most exciting regular season of any sport because there is not a playoff system. The whole season is a playoff system. I don't want a playoff system."

"It is my opinion that these changes will help ensure that the two best teams are playing for the national championship."

"The BCS is college football's equivalent of prayer in school. There's always got to be a debate about it."

"I'm pleased the BCS has revised its selection procedures. A lot of the superfluous has been taken out and the computers have been reduced to six. I think this is a superior system to what we've had. And what happened to Oregon three years ago and USC last year would not have occurred under this new system. Instead, they were taken out of the national championship game."

"In Division I(-A) football, every game is a playoff. Once you lose one game, you're mostly out. If you lose two, you're definitely out. We got 12 playoff games. Teams take that approach. That's probably why there's so much interest. You stub your toe, you can never get back in."

"In basketball there is far less interest in the regular season than there is in the tournament. Everyone gets March Madness for the tournament. You don't want everyone to get January madness for football and forget about everything else that's happening in the regular season. I think basically we are in a playoff the last half of the year in the regular season. ... People from coast to coast are watching each other because if anyone slips, you're going to be out."

"The season is really long. It puts a tremendous amount of stress and fatigue on our players. Everybody needs to relax a little bit and understand the players are here to get an education. Let's make the conference championships a big deal and make the bowl games a reward. I hope that we never do see a playoff."

"There's a lot of football (left). When we get toward the end and we're healthy and still rolling along pretty good, and I'm sitting down to my Thanksgiving turkey and we're undefeated, I'll be concerned about it then."

"If those teams (non-BCS) have equal access to the BCS, strength of schedule must be comparable. It's a little different stepping up once or twice a year when we do it 10 or 11 times a year."

"You're not going to see a playoff in the next decade. In the BCS, every game really does matter. College football probably has the most vibrant regular season in sports. The conference races shape national landscape, culminating in a holiday football smorgasbord."

"Bowl games bring a measure of importance to the regular season not seen in other sports. If teams are simply playing for seeding for a playoff, the outcomes would not mean as much and the interest and excitement, likewise, would not be as feverish. No other intercollegiate sport plays as few regular season games as football and every game means something, conference championships mean something.

"You tell me what other sport, three months before the conclusion of the season, has a game that captures the fancy of the country? There are a lot of things that take place week to week. It's like an ongoing drama. Now, if people want a playoff, let's talk about what it does to the regular season. Anybody who says it has no effect has their head in the sand."

"Big-time college football depends on a meaningful regular season. It can't become college basketball, which, for the largest segment of the sports public, begins the first week of March."

"I've told college football coaches if they ever go to a national playoff system, they're ridiculous. The NCAA tournament has gotten to the point where nothing else counts any more other than to win the whole thing."

"I've followed college football ever since the late '30s, and it's always been decided by a vote. The best team over the course of the season wins, and I'm satisfied with that."

"The Division I-A college playoffs begins in August and ends in January. In a 16 team tournament schools would spend four months playing for seeds."

"Our system has worked beautifully. We have the best regular season of all the sports. I don't know if a tournament really produces the best team. Our champion is determined from August through December."

"We ask so much of these guys it's just unbelievable. We ask an awful lot of them as far as the football part, yet we want them to be exemplary students, we want them to be exemplary citizens, and that's all right, but how much more blood do we want to take out? At some point you have to put the welfare of the players (first). That should be our guiding light on all of our thinking. If we go down the playoff road, then we're not thinking that way. We're appeasing someone else, not the players."

"A playoff would destroy the game's most romantic feature: College football is the last sport in which a season, that period in which leaves turn and air grows cold, really matters."

"College football is built on the regular season. Tennessee-Alabama, Georgia-Florida, Florida-FSU, USC-Notre Dame, Michigan-Ohio State ? that's the guts of college football, the backbone. If you put your eggs in the playoff basket, we deflate this."

Source: Football Bowl Association