NEW ORLEANS -- Fearing that the elaborate system of determining representatives for this fall's inaugural Southwestern Athletic Conference football championship game was too complicated for novice fans to fully comprehend, league commissioner Rudy Washington has abandoned the original method of determining which games will count towards qualification for the game and replaced it with a simpler one.
The original system called for teams in both the Eastern and Western divisions to play the four teams in their respective divisions plus three from the opposite division for a total of seven conference games. The three games from the opposite division would have rotated on two-year intervals.
The new plan calls for only the four games within a team's respective division to count as conference games. League commissioner Rudy Washington said this simpler plan would be much easier for fans to remember.
"After further review of the seven-game format, we believed that the average fan would just not have been able to keep track of which games were being counted as conference games," stated Washington. "The simpler the plan, the less problems we'd face as the season develops."
In the SWAC's divisional format, which takes place starting this fall for all sports except men's and women's basketball, the Eastern Division will consist of Alabama A&M University, Alabama State University, Alcorn State University, Jackson State University and Mississippi Valley State University.
For football, only games played among those schools will count in the league's Eastern Division standings.
The Western Division will consist of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Grambling State University, Prairie View A&M University, Southern University and Texas Southern University. Only games played among those schools will count in the league's Western Division standings.
In cases of ties, the following tiebreaker plan will be implemented:
The inaugural SWAC football championship game will be played on December 11, 1999 at Legion Field in Birmingham, Ala. Kickoff of the nationally-televised contest is slated for 1 p.m.
