College football fans who long for a postseason playoff now have less reason to believe they'll be seeing one anytime soon. Come next winter, though, they'll be able to watch more bowl games than ever before.
Conference commissioners who gathered earlier this week at the annual BCS meetings rejected a "plus-one" proposal that would have allowed for national semifinal and title games to be incorporated into the existing five-game BCS format.
At the same time, the NCAA approved two new postseason games -- the Congressional Bowl and the St. Petersburg Bowl -- to be played next season.
The recent developments are yet another affirmation that college football's oft-scrutinized, oft-criticized postseason will remain without change for the foreseeable future. And if anything, with the addition of two new games, the bowl system just became stronger.
"It's positive," said Steve Hogan, the executive director of Florida Citrus Sports, which oversees Orlando's Champs Sports Bowl and Capital One Bowl. "Definitely for those schools [that will play in the new games] and mostly more in particular for the mid-major conferences that are kind of left at home, if you will."