The door that only opens from the inside

On Oct. 29, 2003, Tulane University president Scott Cowen sat before a congressional committee on C-SPAN 2 and told them the Bowl Championship Series was rigged against more than half of Division I-A football.

Two months later, on Dec. 26, 2003, the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville ran a point-counterpoint on the future of the postseason. On one side: Keith Tribble, CEO of the FedEx Orange Bowl and president of the College Football Bowl Association. On the other: Cowen, taking his case from Congress to the public.

Tribble defended the BCS.

“Let me assure you, 90 years into its existence, the bowl system is the strongest it has ever been,” Tribble wrote.

Cowen called the system what it was.

“The BCS is a flawed system that is not in the best long-term interests of Division I-A intercollegiate athletics,” Cowen wrote. “It is detrimental both to the college teams who belong to it as well as to those schools that are not a part of its arrangement.”

Cowen had seen it firsthand. His Tulane team had gone 12-0 in 1998 — one of two undefeated teams in the country alongside national champion Tennessee. Tulane finished 10th in the BCS standings and was sent to the Liberty Bowl.

“As president of Tulane University, whose football team was undefeated in 1998 but had no realistic access to a major bowl,” Cowen wrote, “I can tell you, firsthand, the adverse impact the Bowl Championship Series has had on the play in college football.”

Tribble’s argument boiled down to tradition and money. The bowls would pay out $2.1 billion over the next decade. The FedEx Orange Bowl was projecting $29.5 million per team for its 2004 game. A playoff would diminish the regular season. The system was working.

Cowen’s argument boiled down to math.

“The BCS arrangement excludes 54 Division I-A teams from college football’s most meaningful games simply because they are not affiliated with BCS conferences,” he wrote. “It is virtually impossible for a non-BCS school to qualify for a BCS bowl, much less contend for a national championship, even if a non-BCS team has a perfect season or one loss.”

He laid out what a replacement system should look like: fair and inclusive. Legally sound. Consistent with how every other NCAA sport crowns a champion. Reasonable access for all programs, including the national championship.

Twenty-three years later, none of those criteria have been met.

The convert

In June 2006, Keith Tribble left the Orange Bowl. He became the athletic director at UCF.

The man who had spent 13 years defending a system that locked out non-power schools went to work at one. At UCF, Tribble oversaw $150 million in facility upgrades — including the construction of Bright House Networks Stadium, which opened to a sellout crowd on Sept. 15, 2007. UCF won the Conference USA championship that December.

Tribble was building the very infrastructure he had once argued wasn’t necessary. The stadium. The facilities. The investment. Everything the system tells non-power programs they need to do to be taken seriously.

He resigned in November 2011 amid an NCAA investigation into recruiting violations.

Tribble left. But the stadium he built is still standing.

The one year the door was open

In 2013, the Big East — the conference UCF had joined — rebranded as the American Athletic Conference. It inherited the Big East’s automatic BCS bid for one final season. One.

UCF won the conference championship. On Jan. 1, 2014, the Knights beat Baylor 52-42 in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl — the biggest upset in BCS history, with Baylor favored by 16.5 points. Blake Bortles threw for 301 yards and ran for a score. George O’Leary’s program had its signature win.

The BCS ended that night. The College Football Playoff replaced it the following season. The American Athletic Conference lost its automatic berth. The door that had been open for exactly one year slammed shut.

Everything right, and it still wasn’t enough

Three years later, Scott Frost took over a UCF program that had gone 0-12. By 2017, the Knights were 13-0.

In the regular season, Auburn had beaten No. 1 Georgia and No. 1 Alabama — two wins over the top-ranked team in the country in the span of three weeks. In the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Jan. 1, 2018, McKenzie Milton and UCF beat that Auburn team 34-27.

UCF was the only undefeated team in the country. They had beaten a team that had beaten both No. 1 teams. They did not get to play for the national championship.

Because non-power conference.

UCF declared themselves national champions. The college football establishment mocked them. But the principle was sound: what else were they supposed to do? They went undefeated. They beat the team that beat the best teams. The system said no anyway.

Scott Cowen had written it in 2003: “It is virtually impossible for a non-BCS school to qualify for a BCS bowl, much less contend for a national championship, even if a non-BCS team has a perfect season.”

Fifteen years later, UCF proved him right.

The backfill

UCF did eventually get to a power conference. But not because they earned it — not in the way the system claims it works.

On July 26, 2021, Oklahoma and Texas announced they were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The Big 12 needed to replace inventory. On Sept. 10, 2021, the conference invited UCF, Cincinnati, Houston and BYU. UCF officially joined on July 1, 2023.

The Knights had won. They had built. They had gone undefeated. They had beaten power conference teams. None of that opened the door. What opened the door was two blue bloods deciding they wanted more money and walking out. If Oklahoma and Texas stay in the Big 12, UCF is still in the American right now.

The meritocracy argument — just win and you’ll get your shot — is a story the system tells programs to keep them quiet while they wait for a seat that only opens when someone else decides to leave.

The other side of the door

Today, UCF is a Big 12 program. USF — 100 miles down I-4 — is still in the American.

USF’s CEO of athletics, Rob Higgins, has been publicly pushing to renew the War on I-4 rivalry. UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir’s response: come to Orlando. No return trip.

“The biggest challenge for us is trying to maintain as many home games in our stadium as possible,” Mohajir said in a statement to Athlon Sports. UCF plays nine Big 12 games and is required to schedule a Power 4 non-conference opponent. There’s no room for a road game against a Group of Five school.

The stadium Mohajir is offering USF a game at — the Acrisure Bounce House — is the stadium Keith Tribble built.

The man who defended the system that excluded non-power schools built the stadium that a former non-power school now uses as leverage against another non-power school.

UCF went from being locked out to locking others out. The door didn’t open for everyone. UCF just got through it and closed it behind them.

The same room, twenty-three years later

In May 2026, the Big Ten held its spring meetings outside Los Angeles. The ACC held its spring meetings on Amelia Island. The American Athletic Conference — the conference UCF left behind — was pitching a standalone G6 playoff for the five conference champions who don’t get a CFP bid. And the CFP management committee had quietly changed the rules on the Group of 6 — the automatic bid no longer requires a conference champion, just the highest-ranked G6 team — without G6 leaders even knowing it happened.

The conversations sound familiar.

ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, pushing for a 24-team playoff: “If you’re going to ask presidents and chancellors and boards to continue to invest in their football programs, it’s really important that they have hope, that they have an opportunity at the beginning of the season to get into the playoff.”

That is Scott Cowen’s argument. Word for word. Invest, build, compete — and the system should give you a fair shot. Cowen said it in 2003 about the non-BCS. Phillips is saying it in 2026 about the ACC.

American commissioner Tim Pernetti, making the case for a separate G6 postseason: “There is demand for more postseason football. You have five conference champions that are not going to the Playoff. How do we create a new enterprise that complements the CFP?”

The conference UCF left is now building its own door — because the one Cowen described as locked in 2003 still is.

And then there was Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard — not a G6 outsider, but a Big 12 AD. One of UCF’s own conference peers.

Pollard was responding to the SEC and the Big Ten — the two conferences that control the majority of CFP revenue, drive the expansion debate and are already being called the Power 2. After the House v. NCAA settlement created the College Sports Commission to set roster spending limits, SEC and Big Ten programs blew past them. Pollard watched it happen and said what a lot of people in his position are thinking: “That’s what’s frustrating to me, the same people that say they want rules only want rules if they don’t apply to them.”

Then he went further: “I said it three years ago — let ’em break away. I would turn it around and say we should break away from them.” And: “Let them go, but they have to go in all their sports and see how fun it is to play baseball and softball and track when it’s just the 20 of you.”

That’s a Big 12 athletic director — Power 4 — sounding exactly like the non-BCS programs Cowen was defending in 2003. And the reason is simple: the revenue gap that once separated BCS from non-BCS, then Power 5 from Group of 5, then Power 4 from G6, is migrating again. The Big 12 and ACC are closer in revenue to the American and the Pac-12 than they are to the SEC and Big Ten. The line keeps moving inward, and Pollard can see his conference sliding toward the wrong side of the next door.

UCF spent 20 years winning, building and waiting to get to the Big 12. They got there, started telling USF there’s no room on the schedule for a Group of Five school and settled into life on the good side of the door. And one of the established programs they now call a peer is already making the same argument UCF used to make — from the same side of the door UCF just fought to reach.

And right now, schools in the ACC and Big 12 are doing exactly what UCF did for 20 years — sitting quietly, building their brands, winning their games and hoping someone on the inside opens the door for them.

UCF spent 20 years trying to get through. They made it. And on the other side, they found another one.

The war never stopped. The door Cowen described in 2003 didn’t open. It just kept reappearing — one room deeper, every time.

The criteria

In 2003, Scott Cowen wrote that the system could only be fixed by replacing it with one that is fair and inclusive, fosters a unified Division I-A, provides reasonable access to the national championship for all programs, meets legal standards consistent with every other NCAA sport, and allows student-athletes to realize their competitive dreams.

That was 23 years ago. Not one of those criteria has been met.

The names changed — BCS to CFP, Big East to American, Division I-A to FBS. The TV deals got bigger. The arguments got louder. But the structure is the same structure Cowen described, and the outcome is the same outcome: programs outside the power conferences are told to win, build, invest and wait — and the door only opens when someone on the inside decides to leave.

Tulane went undefeated in 1998. UCF went undefeated in 2017. Neither got to play for a national championship. The only difference between the two is that the Big 12 needed to fill seats and UCF was standing closest to the door when it opened.

That’s not a meritocracy. That’s a waiting room.