BCS Playoff Proposal Consensus Reached; Committee To Decide Teams
After months of back and forth discussions, college football's biggest power players have finally agreed upon a playoff model.
11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbick agreed to a four-team BCS playoff model that will be passed on to the BCS presidential oversight committee to put it into effect. The oversight committee will meet on June 26 in Washington, D.C. and will vote on the agreed upon system, though it plans to review other plans.
The playoff system will work within the existing BCS bowls and will be decided by a yet-to-be determined committee. The four teams will be decided based on conference championships, regular season record, and strength of schedule, according to the proposal submitted to the oversight committee.
The committee aspect of a college football playoff could create future controversy when the system goes in place in 2014, but this latest step toward a playoff is a moment most football fans will appreciate.
Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott understands that a four-team playoff won't appease everyone, though.
I'm sure it won't satisfy everyone, Scott told reporters. Until you have an eight-team or 16-team seeded playoff, there will be folks out there that aren't completely satisfied. We get that. But we're trying to balance other important parties, like the value of the regular season, the bowls, the academic calendar.
It took a lot of hand-wringing and debate to get to this point. Commissioners like Scott had to protect conference interests, which created for some tense moments. One of the biggest points of contention was whether only conference champions should be eligible to compete in the playoffs, but that issue was eventually worked out.
The next issue that could create some tension among the commissioners is how the new playoff money will be split up. The four-team playoff, where the championship game location will be sold to the highest bidder, could generate as much as $400 to $500 million per year.
We've agreed to the principles, ACC commissioner John Swofford told reporters about the financials. It's hard to move past the principles if you don't know what the market value is. Everyone agrees that financially this is going to be good for everyone in the room.
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