The BCS will investigate the Fiesta Bowl and determine whether or not the bowl game should be kept as a part of the BCS lineup after the bowl game revealed numerous violations and inappropriate actions by longtime president and CEO John Junker, who was fired on Tuesday. Though stripping the Fiesta Bowl of BCS status remains somewhat unlikely, the hype to get another bowl game to take its place has run wild from Atlanta to Orlando to Dallas.
Without question, the leading candidate should the Fiesta Bowl be removed form the BCS picture is the Cotton Bowl. The Cotton Bowl has kept no secret that they are operating in order to make a serious bid to join the BCS down the line but it would be much more difficult to set up that possibility for 2012 or even 2013 if the BCS needs another bowl.
The Cotton Bowl is currently under a contract with FOX for exclusive broadcast rights to the game and the contract does not expire until the end of the 2014 season. ESPN picked up the exclusive BCS television rights prior to last season and would be unable to carry the Cotton Bowl unless the Cotton Bowl can get out of the current FOX deal.
Jerry Jones has done a nice job of attracting college football to Cowboys Stadium in its short lifespan all in an effort to boost the Cotton Bowl's resume for the BCS. Since opening in 2009 Cowboys Stadium has hosted two Big 12 championship games, a pair of Cotton Bowls and a handful of other high-profile regular season games, including Oklahoma vs. BYU in 2009 and TCU vs. Oregon State this past season. In addition to college football and NFL games the stadium has hosted an NBA All-Star game, a championship-boxing match and last season's Super Bowl. Jones knows how to host a big-time event, and the BCS would be crazy to pass up an opportunity to bring a BCS game to a place that is built for a BCS atmosphere.
The BCS reviews the BCS games and conferences every four years and it is expected that changes will be coming to the BCS in one way or another, with the Mountain West Conference hoping to earn an automatic BCS bid and the Cotton Bowl hoping to receive a BCS share as the top two storylines to follow.
Other bowl games that have been mentioned as candidates, supposing the Fiesta Bowl does lose a BCS spot, have been the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Atlanta and the Capital One Bowl in Orlando. Of the two, neither quite match up to the level of the Fiesta Bowl or Cotton Bowl.
The Chick-fil-A Bowl would have a decent shot at making a run for the BCS given its stadium and college football tradition in Atlanta. The Georgia Dome has hosted the SEC Championship game since 1994 and an agreement to keep the game in Atlanta through 2017 was announced in late February. The SEC Championship game has regularly been one of the top college football games of the year and business in Atlanta booms when the game comes to town, so expect Atlanta and the Chick-fil-A Bowl to form a legitimate offer to the BCS when the time comes.
The same may be said for Orlando and the Capital One Bowl, but poor stadium conditions will play a negative role in the decision-making. "We were very aggressive last time," Capital One Bowl executive director Steve Hogan told Sporting News. "I don't want to speculate on what could happen (with the Fiesta Bowl), but we would be very aggressive again."
Stadium renovations for The Citrus Bowl, the host stadium for the Capital One Bowl, were approved in recent years but the money has yet to find a way to the project after being dried up in taxes and other outlets in the city of Orlando.
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