Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has been the Bowl Championship Series coordinator for only three and half months, but the file folder that sits on his bookshelf, where he keeps the fans' playoff proposals, is filling up very quickly.

"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the public wants a playoff," Tranghese said. "I've gotten more than 100 letters, some of which have been full-blown proposals."

	As Big East commish and chair of the men's basketball committee, Mike Tranghese, right center, knows the benefits of a playoff system. But he says he wouldn't change the BCS.

Tranghese makes a point of thanking those who take the time to write, but admits the steady flow of letters suggesting a four-, eight- or the 16-game playoff used at the Division I-AA and Division-II level, isn't going to help uproot the current BCS system, which is entering its fifth year and is contracted to run for another four.

"There's been absolutely no push from the athletic directors or the school presidents to go to a playoff system, and they're the key decision-makers," Tranghese said. Some of the proposals that Tranghese has received detail the possible additional revenue bump associated with a change to a playoff system. Money became a key talking point in 1998, after a Swiss marketing company named ISL proposed a 16-game playoff that would generate $300 million a year -- or between $1 million to $4 million annually to every Division I-A football school.

Instead, the BCS conferences chose to stay with their less lucrative deal, which figures to distribute about $135 million to the conferences that play in the four BCS games in 2006, the final year of its contract with ABC. Payouts from the other 24 bowls, assuming all of them remain intact, will boost the total payout to around $163 million.

Good thing they did, too. ISL went on to structure huge marketing alliances with FIFA for the 2002 World Cup and the ATP Tennis Masters series before declaring bankruptcy in May 2001.

"They came in with the promise of throwing out the possibility of making billions of dollars off a playoff system," said Jim McVay, president and chief executive officer of the Outback Bowl. "But that has absolutely no credibility now, since their proposal was flawed and they've since gone bankrupt."

"Every figure you hear -- high or low -- is fictitious until you have someone who is prepared to write the check," said Tranghese, who insisted there's small chance of the BCS member conferences and ABC agreeing to scrap the bowl system for a playoff before the contract expires.

"Everybody outside the industry wants to knock the bowl business, but it's not such a bad product," said Derrick Fox, executive director of the Alamo Bowl. "Over the past 88 years, the bowl system has generated $1.6 billion for the institutions that have played in them."

Despite the BCS leadership saying philosophical, rather than financial, differences prevent serious talk of a playoff, others -- particularly aligned with non-BCS member schools -- are not as convinced.

"Arranging a playoff is easier logistically than arranging the bowl games," said Bob Pruett, who coached Marshall University to a Division I-AA championship in 1996 and to five consecutive bowl games since becoming a Division I-A member school. "But if it's the farther you go, the more money you get (in a playoff), even if the pot is bigger, the BCS conferences risk losing a significant piece if a non-BCS school advances far enough."

	Chat with Rovell
	ESPN.com Sports Business writer Darren Rovell is geared up and ready to take your questions in his first online chat. Darren won't be hitting the chat room until 4 p.m. ET on Friday, August 2, but you can send your questions in now.

Last season, the BCS distributed $94 million to the six BCS member conferences, enabling a school like Vanderbilt -- which hasn't had a winning season in 20 years -- to pull in at least $1 million a year. Meanwhile, non-BCS Division I-A member conferences -- without one school guaranteed to play in any of the four BCS games -- received a combined $4.4 million to share.

But sports television consultant Neal Pilson says there's no reason to believe the six BCS member conferences can't control the playoffs just as they control the current system. A new system, he said, would allow them to benefit from larger revenues.

"The public would support a playoff, the sponsors would support it and ABC, CBS and NBC would be willing to bid much more for the rights than what is being paid now," said Pilson, confident that a playoff could generate more than $100 million in addition revenue.

A decade ago, when Pilson was president of CBS Sports, he proposed to the NCAA an eight-team, seven-game playoff. According to his plan, the quarterfinal games would be played on Jan. 1, the final would be played two weeks later and the bowl games not involved in the playoffs would still be played.

While Pilson says interest for the lesser tier bowls will still draw strong ratings, due to the quality of matchups and lack of competition in late December and early January, many bowl directors disagree.

"If we're not part of the playoff, then we're as good as an NIT game," said Rick Baker, executive director of the SBC Cotton Bowl. "And selling football's version of the NIT is going to be much more of a challenge to sell in this market."

Baker, who was part of the host committee for the men's basketball Final Four in 1986, said he believed if the Cotton Bowl was deemed a first-round playoff site, the entire week of pageantry that long has been associated with it would be lost.

"I saw the way it was at the Final Four," Baker said. "Instead of the whole week of entertainment we have now, we'd have the kids come into town, stay in their rooms for the short time they are here, play the game and leave."

Steve Ehrhart, executive director of the AXA Liberty Bowl, thought that Division I-A college football eventually would go to a playoff system, when he began working with bowl games nine years ago.

"I soon found out that the playoff system is impractical for many reasons," said Ehrhart, who was a sports agent in the 1970s, the executive director of the United States Football League in the '80s and president of the Colorado Rockies in the early '90s. "The university needs that month to connect with alumni and they need the week once they are there to celebrate."

Ehrhart said the week full of festivities, which he says will be compromised in a playoff situation, wouldn't allow schools to have an impact on the community. "It's not a coincidence that after Colorado State played in our game two years ago, that the next fall there were 27 students from Memphis that enrolled at Colorado State," Ehrhart said.

The BCS member schools will continue to discuss playoff possibilities to perhaps begin after the 2005 bowl season and Tranghese will continue to get proposals from fans, some suggesting the playoffs as a fairer means to break up a supposedly rigged system that ensures that its member schools fill the eight bowl spots at the end of the year.

"The bowl system was more of a cartel before the BCS," Tranghese said. "Despite the fact that it's hard for a non-BCS member school to go to a BCS bowl, there are more opportunities than there were before."

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at Darren.rovell@espnpub.com