BCS commissioners endorse plan for four-team playoff
Recommendation heads to university presidents, chancellors for approval next week.
CHICAGO — One step — endorsement by a panel of university presidents and chancellors — remains. But college football stepped firmly toward a four-team playoff Wednesday.
The conference commissioners who oversee the Bowl Championship Series endorsed the playoff and a move to a committee to select teams, culminating five months of debate and pointing the sport in a bold new direction. It has clung for decades to a postseason revolving around its bowls.
Three participants told USA TODAY Sports on the condition of anonymity, because details weren’t being released, of the preference for a selection committee.
The commissioners and Notre Dame athletics director Jack Swarbrick, who oversee the BCS, take the recommendations to a meeting in Washington, D.C., next week with the presidents’ oversight committee. That 12-member panel has final say. It will give attention to at least one alternative — a more modest plus-one model that simply would stage a No. 1 vs. No. 2 championship game after the bowls — but is expected to go with the plan the commissioners lay out.
Current BCS contracts run through the 2013 season, and the playoff — expected to fetch up to $400 million in annual TV rights fees, up from the current $125 million a year — would go into effect in 2014.
“What’s been terrific is how we’ve all been able to work together over the last few weeks on some difficult issues,” Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive said.
The group favors semifinals in existing top bowls, keeping the bowls meaningful. The selection committee would mirror that in basketball, where a panel fills and seeds a 68-team bracket. The football committee would be charged with picking the nation’s four best, most deserving teams, giving strong weight to conference championships, two commissioners told USA TODAY Sports. Connecticut banned from 2012-13 postseason, 4C SEC head: Mike Slive says the commissioners compromised.