As Ball State University opened its 2007 football season with a 14-13 loss to Miami University, 15,488 fans looked on, including a school record 7,885 students. Among the crowd was the President of the NCAA Myles Brand.
Brand, who said he goes to a college football game about half the weekends during the football season, said he was not in attendance because of the recent NCAA violations by the Ball State University athletic department.
"I am here to watch a great football game," Brand said in a halftime press conference. "I really do enjoy a good football game, and the [Mid-American Conference] plays great football."
Both the Cardinal's starting quarterback Nate Davis and coach Brady Hoke said the team wasn't aware Brand was going to be in the crowd. However, Davis did say it was good to have the top man in the NCAA want to come to Ball State.
"It means a lot to have someone that big to come to one of our games," Davis said.
In the press conference Brand talked about some of the national story lines revolving around college football.
In recent years a trend of small conference teams migrating to the bigger conferences, such as Temple University's addition to the MAC, has formed.
Brand said it's neither bad nor good. He described the trend as the natural course of things, that schools will always want to be in the biggest conference possible.
One reason teams want to be the bigger conferences is due to the bowl game ties each conference has. For the most part the bigger, better conferences get to have teams play in the big bowl games. A select few are called Bowl Championship Series conferences. The SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-10, and the Big East make up the BCS conferences and each conference's champion receives an automatic bid into one of the top five bowl games, including the National Championship game.
The winning team of the National Championship game is proclaimed the national champion. This makes it possible to have at least two undefeated teams after the season ends. It happened in 2004 when Auburn University and the University of Southern California finished with zero losses.
The possibility of it happening again has some campaigning for a playoff to decide the national champion. However, Brand said it's unlikely to happen soon.
"It seems to me that for the foreseeable future we will not have a major playoff," Brand said. "The reason for that is because the presidents and the league commissioners are really concentrating on the regular season. They want to preserve the regular season, they want to preserve those rivalries."
Brand did say the idea of a plus one system could become a reality.
"Now for the plus one situation ... that's up in the air," Brand said. "We could get there in the next two years when the Fox contract runs out. That might be the appropriate time to do it. I don't see any signs right now, we can't tell."
The plus one system varies depending on who you talk to. Some say it is where the top two teams following all the bowls play for the National Championship, others that it is the top four teams who play a two-game playoff for the title.
Brand, former President of Indiana University, also talked about the upcoming game between Ball State and Indiana, although he took a neutral stance.
"I'm sure it will be a very hard fought game," Brand said with a smirk.
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