The major college football schools left outside the Bowl Championship Series united Tuesday in an effort to get access to the lucrative postseason and reduce the requirements to belong in Division I-A.

Tulane president Scott Cowen convened a teleconference of 44 presidents from non-BCS schools and created a Presidential Coalition for Athletic Reform. The goals of the coalition are to improve access for all teams to postseason football, reduce the financial requirements for remaining in Division I-A and raise academic requirements in college athletics.

The presidents accepted an invitation to meet with representatives of the BCS on Sept. 8 in Chicago but said they were prepared to press the issue even further.

"We believe that the Bowl Championship Series is anticompetitive and has characteristics of a cartel," Cowen said.

"Tulane met last year with antitrust lawyers. I don't think it's productive for higher education and universities to sue each other. But with such an important issue, we can't rule out any options now."

Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg, whose conference is part of the BCS, said the system does not violate antitrust violations.

The two major issues are the new Division I-A requirements, which go into effect in August 2004, and the postseason. The major conferences ruled out an NFL-style playoff system on Monday.

Cowen said it was not "appropriate" to rule out any options before the meeting and pushed for a playoff system that would include all of Division I-A. The BCS includes the champions of the Pac-10, the Big 12, the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big East, who all get automatic bids, plus two at-large teams.

The goal of the system is to pit the top two teams in a championship game. Notre Dame, an independent, is the only school outside those six conferences to play in a BCS bowl in the first five years of the system.

"We simply want access like we have in all other sports," Cowen said. "We want a level playing field. There's not a level playing field in college football. We're not looking for some handout. We're looking for access."

Teams from non-BCS conferences are guaranteed a bid to one of the four major bowl games only if they are ranked in the top six. In 1998, Tulane went undefeated but could only play in the Liberty Bowl because it was ranked 11th in the BCS standings.

But in the 20 years before the BCS started, only one school other than Notre Dame that is not currently in those six conferences played in one of the series' four bowls.

The BCS has paid out more than $80 million to the major conferences each year, compared with about $8 million to the schools from the other five conferences.

"Let's not ask about them giving money to us," said Bill Greiner, the president of Buffalo. "They want to drive people out of competition at the Division I-A level unless we come up to some standard they decide to set in terms of expenditures and attendance. That is plain flat-out wrong."

The increased requirements for Division I-A will require schools to sponsor 16 varsity teams instead of 14; to average 15,000 paid attendance per game; and to give at least 200 total athletic scholarships or pay $4 million in scholarships.

Weiberg said the BCS shouldn't be blamed for the changes.

"The I-A membership requirements were voted on by the NCAA membership," Weiberg said. "They were not designed by the Bowl Championship Series schools. An NCAA subcommittee created these standards."