Fox crafting a strategy

PHOENIX -- The game will be the same: No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the Bowl Championship Series rankings.

But beyond that, next year's BCS title game will be different, much different.

New format.

New stadium.

And, perhaps most significantly, a new television network.

The BCS series (other than the Rose Bowl) belongs to Fox now, which means . . .

Yesterday, as BCS officials went through the second day of spring meetings, the Fox people tried to give a glimpse of how they view the future.

''If you look at our 12-year history with the NFL, we've shown a great deal of respect for the game," said Fox Sports president and executive producer Ed Goren, who met with BCS officials yesterday to discuss the coverage, which will begin with four of the BCS's five games next season (the Rose Bowl remains with ABC).

Fox signed a four-year, $320 million deal to televise the games, including the title game, which Goren says he is comfortable keeping in its time slot of the first Monday after New Year's Day.

Under the new format, the BCS series includes the four bowl games -- Orange, Rose, Fiesta, and Sugar -- plus the title game played a week later at one of the same sites, starting with the Fiesta.

But when Fox televises its first BCS title game, it won't be at Arizona State's Sun Devil Stadium, which has been the home of the Fiesta Bowl, but in Cardinal Stadium, a state-of-the-art facility that will open in August in Glendale, Ariz., about a 20-minute ride west of Phoenix.

The stadium is a back-to-the-future project. It will have a retractable roof -- not unusual in this high-tech era -- but also a retractable grass field, which will sit just outside the stadium for roughly 350 days of the year and be rolled in for Cardinals game and the two BCS games. (It takes about 65 minutes to bring the field in.) Capacity at the stadium will be 72,886.

The cost of the facility, including the land and eventually a media and convention center, shopping complex, and hotel, is a cool $465 million.

While Fox will bring its bells-and-whistles style to the telecasts, it says it will preserve the integrity of the game and promote the pageantry and drama of college football.

What the Fox people did not address, at least directly, is that there are elements in place for a ''plus one" format, which would take two winners from the four BCS bowl games and match them in the title game.

Goren says he is open to what happens.

''We signed the deal," he said. ''If it changes along the way, we can adjust."

Fox, which currently has no national regular-season college football package, hopes to promote the BCS in its NFL postgame coverage with a weekly release of the Harris Interactive poll and the coaches' poll, which the BCS uses as the human element in its selection process. That will mean an adjustment, since the Harris poll was released and promoted on ABC's Monday night NFL telecasts last season.

Goren, who came to Fox from CBS, concedes, like everyone else in the BCS, that the task of selling the new ''double hosting" format to the public will require some work.

''It's a huge educational process," said Goren.

''It's a challenge," said Fox Sports chief operating officer Larry Jones. ''But during the NFL season, we're going to use our platform to get the message out."

''We're not shy about promotion," said Goren, who said one change he planned was turning the end-of-the-season BCS selection show into a prime time affair on Sunday night after Fox's NFL postgame show.

Goren, like many, believes the ''plus one" system has enormous potential appeal, since it would constitute a playoff-type system to determine a champion.

''We can express our opinion," said Goren.

BCS coordinator Mike Slive, who is also the Southeastern Conference commissioner, said his mind remains open to other options, even going back to the pre-BCS days of simply just having bowl games without any formulas or computer rankings but simply tie-ins to conferences.

The problem with that is not only less money, but the potential of the No. 1 and No. 2 teams not playing each other. Last year, for example, No. 1 Southern Cal would have been committed to the Rose Bowl and No. 2 Texas would have been committed to the Fiesta Bowl.

Goren said he could have lived with the BCS the way it worked out last year.

''Last year was a perfect storm," said Goren, referring to high-intensity encounters not only in the BCS title game in the Rose Bowl between USC and Texas, but also the Florida State-Penn State marathon in the Orange Bowl, the Ohio State-Notre Dame matchup in the Fiesta Bowl, and the Georgia-West Virginia meeting in the Sugar Bowl.

For now, however, Fox and the BCS will begin their new partnership with open minds.

''It's all a work in progress," said Jones.