BCS pairings to become theater

Jim Williams, The Examiner
Dec 2, 2006 3:00 AM (6 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 7 of 8,948 articles

BALTIMORE - So who will face Ohio State in the Bowl Championship Series title game?

On Saturday, as Florida battles Arkansas for the SEC championship and Southern Cal plays UCLA, Michigan will be sitting in Ann Arbor cheering for both the Gators and Trojans to lose. Those games will help clear up the BCS picture.

And on Sunday night at 8 p.m., FOX will telecast the announcement of the BCS pairings, a first for prime-time broadcast TV.

“Since this is the moment college football fans wait for all season long, these matchups deserve to be unveiled on the biggest stage possible, with as much production value as we can bring to it,” FOX Sports President Ed Goren said. “There’s no better platform on television than Sunday night in prime-time on FOX, following NFL doubleheader coverage featuring a national Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game.”

Chris Rose, the “BCS on FOX” host, will be joined in the studio by the network’s top analyst team of Barry Alvarez and Charles Davis.

Around the country, BCS lead play-by-play announcer Thom Brennaman will be live in Columbus, Ohio with coach Jim Tressel and the Big Ten champion Buckeyes. Allstate Sugar Bowl reporter Jeanne Zelasko will be on the USC campus with coach Pete Carroll and the Pac-10 champion Trojans. Lead “BCS on FOX” reporter Chris Myers will be in Gainesville with coach Urban Meyer and the fourth-ranked Gators, and reporter Patrick O’Neal will be stationed in Boise, Idaho with the undefeated Boise State Broncos and coach Chris Petersen.

If Florida beats Arkansas in the SEC title game and gets left out of the national championship, Meyer’s reaction should be great theater. He has been very outspoken about the flaws in the system, and if his team in not picked to play Ohio State, Sunday’s telecast could quickly become a FOX reality show ... or at least a spin-off of ““Survivor.”

Jim Williams is a seven-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer, director and writer. E-mail him at jwilliamsexaminer@gmail.com.


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