Count us still decidedly in favor of having Lee Corso make all playoff-related decisions from the back of a giant rubber duck. (ESPN)

By Holly Anderson

Conference commissioners are convening in Pasadena today to begin working on the mechanics of the latest iteration of the BCS. Their tasks at hand include:

• Selecting three bowls to join the six-game semifinal sites pool. It is nigh impossible, at this point, to imagine any games other than the Fiesta, Cotton and Chick-fil-A joining the Rose, Sugar and Orange. Intrigue likelihood: minimal.

• Selecting the site of the first national title game under the new system. It’s Arlington. Everybody knows it’s Arlington, even though it’s polite to not act like it’s a foregone conclusion, and we’re all going to Jerry Jones Space Camp in January 2015. If all the items on the commissioners’ to-do list get knocked out this fast they’ll be bellying up at Pie’n Burger by noon.

• Selecting the selection committee.  With respect, we believe we have already attended to this matter in a thorough and fair fashion.

• Naming the new contraption. Said Bill Hancock to the AP: ”It will be simple. It will not be cutesy. And it will be descriptive. I’ve seen too many people make mistakes by trying to be cutesy.” (Hear what he thought, but did not say.)

A prohibition of cutesiness knocks off our first naming suggestion of “Bunny Cuddling Snuggletyme,” but we have more. Cast your votes after the jump for a new BCS handle that would require only minimal alterations to everyone’s embroidered rolling suitcases and company blazers:

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Two more hours of ESPN college football programming means two more hours of possible Lee Corso sightings.

Did the Huntsville Times just portend the next great leap forward in reality television programming?

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama –Nick Saban figures there’s one certainty about the new college football playoff scenario. There will be “a two-hour ESPN show on who got left out,” he said.

Far be it for us to fail to heed the auguries of Saban (or to dare to meet his gaze directly): A sister program to our summer hit, the Selection Committee Selection Show, is clearly called for. Run it in that dead stretch of actionless time in the days between the Army-Navy Game and the New Mexico Bowl.

First Segment: Man vs. Self

We open on a tight shot of Tom Rinaldi, clad in an exquisite white tuxedo and oversized silver platform sneakers, seated at a grand piano on a turntable that rotates at a sedate speed. Casually, with effortless grace, he ripples through a sonata of unknown origin. The camera pulls back to reveal Dabo Swinney, unproud head coach of a 12-1 Clemson squad. He stands on a scale model indoor football field. Around his neck is a veterinary Elizabethan collar. “Explain what you saw that the committee didn’t in the ACC Championship Game,” Rinaldi probes. Mechanized animatronic football players rise out of the turf, but Swinney, hampered by the collar, cannot place his whistle in his mouth to activate the simulation. His screaming will haunt you for all your nights to come.

Second Segment: Man vs. Nature

In a soundproof booth, on hidden camera, Gary Pinkel is informed he can bump Mizzou’s strength of schedule up one slot in next year’s rankings for every exotic poisonous insect he selects and eats. He gobbles the entire tray without question. Doesn’t even take a sip of water.

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Notre Dame’s Rev. John Jenkins is one of 12 university presidents on the current oversight committee. (ZUMAPRESS.com)

• What’s all this, then? The BCS presidential oversight committee convenes in Washington today to deliberate college football playoff plans proposed by the conference commissioners last week.

• The what, now? There are a lot of moving decision-making parts controlling the college football postseason; the BCS doesn’t actually begin and end with Bill Hancock (even though he gets to say all the fun stuff). From the organization’s mission statement: “The conference commissioners and the Notre Dame athletics director make decisions regarding all BCS issues, in consultation with an athletics directors advisory group and subject to the approval of a presidential oversight committee whose members represent all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision programs.”

• So who’s in charge here? Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger is the ACC’s rep and chairman of the committee.

• Anything special we need to know about him? According to Virginia Tech, Steger “has been asked by the Swiss Ambassador to the United States and The World Bank to serve on a committee to establish a foundation in the United States to conduct research on mitigating global natural disasters.”

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Bobby Bowden wants to be on college football’s playoff selection committee, but is he ready to take part in the butt-dialing trials? (US PRESSWIRE)

Asks Mr. Matt Hayes of the Sporting News:” Don’t want to be Mr. Conspiracy, but who chooses this playoff selection committee? Conflicts of interest everywhere.” Answereth we: reality show!*

But much as we’d like to make this process a straight-up ripoff of ABC’s Wipeout, or ESPN’s own greatest television product of all time, Battle of the Gridiron Stars, Bobby Bowden wants in on this thing, and so does Phil Fulmer. Physical prowess is an important attribute of any successful playoff selector, but no one  should be able to muscle his or her way onto the committee. To that end, we have composed a wide-ranging list of events in six categories that should showcase each aspirant’s strengths in areas vital to choosing college football’s four finest teams:

Feats of speed

• The Chase. Combatants will compete in three timed obstacle course routes while piloting a college football coach’s most necessary vehicles: a golf cart, a jetski and a rented Escalade.

Feats of technology

• Butt-dialing. Combatants will compose sonnets on subjects of their own choosing, on a BlackBerry residing in the back pocket of their pleated Dockers. No touching of the BlackBerry is allowed.

• DO YOU GUYS KNOW HOW TO POST VIDEOS TO FACEBOOK? Lightning sudden-death elimination round, delivered in the form of a yes or no question.

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