SEC commissioner Mike Slive began serving his two-year term in January as coordinator of the controversial Bowl Championship Series. Already, Slive is discovering the job is even more visible nationally than being the commissioner of one of the nation's best overall college conferences.

Q: Do you view the BCS differently as the commissioner of the SEC, a BCS conference, than you did when you were commissioner of Conference USA, a non-BCS conference?

A: "That's a heckuva question. I guess there's a difference between an emerging conference and a conference about to celebrate its 75th anniversary. I've tried to work in the best interest of the conference I've been in at the time."

Q: By adding basically one more BCS bowl game, did the BCS really do anything in the off-season other than window dressing?

A: "What we did was we added a fifth bowl and created a different format with the four bowls and the national championship rotating sites. We expanded the at-large eligibility from 12 teams to 14 teams to account for the additional two slots from eight teams to 10 teams. With the Harris Poll in place, with the coaches' poll in place, with the computers place, we've got peace in the valley."

Q: Is the next step dealing with teams who have ineligible players (like USC's Reggie Bush allegedly being ineligible because of alleged NCAA rules violations)?

A: "The BCS is not designed to deal with issues of that nature. But we will talk about in it in our meeting this month."

Q: How much different has it been for you being the grand poohba of the BCS?

A: "I do more media interviews than before. Part of the work is to make sure the BCS runs smoothly and the game operation of the bowls. But also felt these couple of years for me is an opportunity to think about the future of college football, what's in the best interest for college football.

"I'm not married to any particular (postseason) format. I've always been open-minded. The four bowls and revolving the title game is what we're going to try for the next four years. We'll see how it works and it will rise and fall on its own merits. Will there be other ways of doing it? You have to think about three grounding principles no matter what you decide.

"One is that college football is part of higher education, part of the academic mission. Therefore, whatever happens in post-season that will be an integral piece of it.

"Secondly, we have the best regular season of any sport. We drew 5.8 million people to SEC games last year and filled out stadiums to 97A 1/2 percent capacity and averaged more than 74,000 people. We want to keep that regular-season value.

"Thirdly, we've had a bowl tradition for 75 to 100 years. We have eight bowl opportunities in our league, meaning two-thirds of our teams can go to bowls. That's important to us.

"So whatever the issues are, I want to talk to athletic directors, coaches, the media and we'll see how it works the next few years. I can't think about the future without thinking about Auburn two years ago (the Tigers went unbeaten and got shut out of the national championship game)."

Q: Is it a tough gig being BCS coordinator?

A: "I'll characterize it this way. Bobby Gaston, who's retiring as our supervisor of football officials in the SEC, has always wanted the NCAA to allow officials to announce the number of a player who committed a penalty. He said in hockey, they not only announce who committed the penalty, they put him in a box and stare at him for two minutes. In this (BCS) job, this is my two years in the box."

Q: How important is it to get the Liberty Bowl back as one of your bowl tie-ins?

A: "Personally, I've had long standing relationship with the bowl, with (Liberty Bowl executive director) Steve (Ehrhart) and the city (of Memphis). So we're happy to be back with them."

Q: You've got a women's basketball coach (Tennessee's Pat Summitt) now making more than $1 million a year. Did you think you'd ever see that?

A: "We've seen that on the men's side. She (Summitt) is one of the best coaches who ever coached the game, men or women."