Athletic Director Steve Pederson,

Congratulations on your Mieneke Car Care Bowl win and top 15 finish! I am writing to you today because I was unable to contact Chancellor Nordenberg regarding his position on the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee. I have already presented the attached plan to Bill Hancock and Commissioner John Marinatto but believe that its scope and vision are beyond the jurisdiction of the BCS alone.

The attached plan includes formal NCAA rule changes that would have allowed the University of Pittsburgh to participate in two bowls in 2008. Pittsburgh would have also benefited from the additional revenue from the additional bowls of the following Big East members:

Louisville in 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2001; West Virginia in 2007, 2006 and 2005; Cincinnati in 2009 and 2008; Rutgers in 2006; and Syracuse in 2001.

An alternate version of these rule changes would allow the NCAA to establish guidelines to clarify their constraints on any proposed tournament and bring the certification of any future tournament under the supervision of the NCAA Championship/Sports Management Cabinet.

These rule changes would need a conference, such as the Big East, to sponsor them to be considered. The Big Twelve's recent bowl eligibility proposal has caused many NCAA members to talk about examining the health of the bowl system in its entirety. These designs and my personal vision of establishing the BCS as an accreditation board for the bowls would greatly enhance that conversation.

With Department of Justice interest in the BCS, hiring a Director of Research and Development to study the constraints on the postseason and implement design improvements for 2014 is a prudent coarse of action. This is the heart of my plan.
A postseason format is included in the attached plan that would have allowed Cincinnati to participate in the championship process in 2009. A simulation of this design using the results of the past twelve years in included, as is a thirty page discussion of the real world constraints on postseason designs.

This plan is publicly available at http://www.bcsevolution.com/pages/prathers-postseason-plan. I would greatly appreciate any insights you have regarding the college football postseason my research has overlooked. This E-mail will also be posted publicly at BCS Evolution, and I would be delighted to offer you an opportunity to respond to these efforts.

I can be reached at benjamin.prather@gmail.com.

Thank you for your time,

Ben Prather