Big East commissioner John Marinatto will not get to run the BCS after all.

BCS officials announced they’d instead elevate Bill Hancock from BCS administrator to the newly-created executive directorship, starting next year. Since the BCS’ inception in 1998, the conference commissioners have rotated at the coordinator position, each serving a two-year term. Marinatto’s turn was set to begin after this coming round of games, but the conference commissioners agreed several months ago that the role had become too demanding – and posed too much potential for a conflict of interest – to continue to be filled in that way.

Hancock is in good position to take over. He became the first full-time employee of the BCS back in 2005. He’d formerly been the administrative director of March Madness, working for the NCAA basketball staff from 1989 through 2002. Before that, he was at the old Big Eight Conference and he was co-chair of Kansas City’s local organizing committee for the 1988 Final Four. He left the NCAA in 2002 to spend more time with his family. In January of 2001, his then-31 year old son Will, an assistant sports information director at Oklahoma State, was one of the 10 people associated with the Cowboys basketball team who perished in that awful plane crash near Denver.

For a good read on Hancock’s thinking, check out this interview he did with BCS Guru last winter.

Personally, I like this move. I’m not a fan of the BCS, yes, but we’re stuck with it for some time. And if we are, then it’s much better we have an ostensibly separate, unaffiliated voice at the helm.