Bowl Coalition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bowl Coalition is a predecessor of the Bowl Championship Series that was formed through an agreement among college football bowl games and conferences for the purpose of trying to match the top two teams in a national championship bowl game and to provide quality bowl game matchups for the champions of its member conferences. It was established for the 1992 season after co-national champions in both 1990 and 1991. The agreement was in place for the 1992, 1993, and 1994 seasons. It was supplanted by the Bowl Alliance.

The Bowl Coalition consisted of the SEC, Big 8, Southwest Conference, ACC and Big East champions, Notre Dame, and two conference runner-ups from among the Big 8, SWC, ACC, Big East and Pac-10. The Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Fiesta Bowls were the associated bowls. The Orange, Sugar and Cotton Bowls hosted Big 8, SEC and SWC champs, respectively. The top “host” team played the top “at-large” team in the host team’s affiliated bowl. If the top 2 teams were both “at-large”, then the Fiesta would have hosted the title game.

One of the flaws of the Bowl Coalition was that the major New Year's day games had NCAA Division I conference tie-ins, such as the Southeastern Conference hosting the Sugar Bowl, the defunct Southwest Conference hosting the Cotton Bowl, the old Big Eight Conference {now Big 12 with 4 added SWC schools} hosting the Orange Bowl. The Rose Bowl had 2 tie-ins, from the Pacific 10 and the Big Ten.

The Rose Bowl would not break their tie-ins so the agreement to match the highest rated teams in rotating New Year's Day bowl games (Orange, Sugar and Fiesta) was a flawed system because most years, it produced a clear Mythical National Championship.

Eventually the Bowl Coalition became the Bowl Alliance, breaking up the Conference tie-ins and tweaking a system that still did not include the Big Ten and the Pac 10. The Big Ten's Penn State went 12-0 in 1994 defeating the Pac 10's Oregon but still finished 2nd to 13-0 Nebraska, who came back to beat Miami in the Orange Bowl.

The Pac-10 and Big Ten conferences later joined the group in a move the still recieves criticism from some fans of each conference from perceived injustices, such as Oregon's exclusion from the championship game in 2001 when it was ranked second in both polls, and USC's exclusion in 2004 despite being ranked first in both polls used.

The current BCS was extracted from the Super Alliance.

1 Bowl Coalition championship game results
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Bowl Coalition championship game results

Season	Date	Winner	Score	Loser	Score	Site
1994*	January 1, 1995	1 Nebraska (12-0)	24	3 Miami (10-1)	17	Orange Bowl
1993	January 1, 1994	1 Florida St. (11-1)	18	2 Nebraska (11-1)	16	Orange Bowl
1992	January 1, 1993	2 Alabama (13-0)	34	1 Miami (11-1)	13	Sugar Bowl

Notes:

Rankings are from the Associated Press (Writers Poll). Records and Rankings are prior to bowl games.
1994 Season: No. 2 Penn State (11-0) played in and won the Rose Bowl on January 2, thus No. 3 Miami was still in the running to win the National Championship when it played on January 1.