Players, it is argued, don't need the additional pressure and demands on their time. The game doesn't need another jolt of commercialization.
Tradition is too important.
And what they don't want, the game doesn't get. That has been a fact of postseason football for about the past half-dozen years, driven home most recently when the commissioners extended their Bowl Championship Series contract with ABC Television and choked off the latest campaign for a playoff. A growing question, as the NCAA's two top governing boards conduct meetings the next two days in Indianapolis, is how far the commissioners have come to expand their sphere of influence - and whether theirs are now the real seats of power in intercollegiate athletics. The focus falls on the six conferences that are the cornerstone of football's Bowl Championship Series. In particular, though, attention is focused on the commissioners who oversee the nation's two most prestigious leagues, the Big Ten's Jim Delany and the Southeastern's Roy Kramer.