WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - The BCS, often criticized and occasionally despised since its implementation in 1998, will be dead and gone by the 2014 season. In its place will be a four-team playoff of national semifinals and a championship game.
After six meetings by the BCS conference commissioners this year, the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee needed three hours Tuesday to change the college football landscape. Finally, the only NCAA sport without a playoff or tournament will have one.
Charles Steger, the president of Virginia Tech and chairman of the oversight committee, called it “a bestof-both-worlds result. ... A four-team playoff doesn’t go too far. It goes just the right amount.”
The national semifinals will be rotated among six bowls. A source familiar with the process said the RoseBowl and the new Champions Bowl, featuring teams from the Big 12 and SEC, already had secured their spots with four more to be selected.
No. 1 will play No. 4, and No. 2 will play No. 3 on Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
The winners will advance to the championship on the first Monday in January that is six or more days after the last semifinal. The first championship Monday is set for Jan. 12, 2015.
The championship game will be bid out like the Super Bowl and the Final Four.
A selection committee will choose the four teams based on criteria like won-lost record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and conference championships.
The commissioners threaded the needle to keep the regular-season and bowl
system relevant while taking
a major step forward.
“It will be a tremendous
postseason,” new Big 12 Com
missioner Bob Bowlsby said.
“That’s certainly our aspira
tion to make New Year’s Eve
and New Year’s Day a college
football celebration and to do
so in every possible way - by
the best pageantry, the best
competition and the best lo
cation.” The TV rights money
could skyrocket from the cur
rent $180 million a year. In
dustry experts have estimated
that it could reach $500 mil
lion. Negotiations will begin
this fall with rights-holderESPN having an exclusive 30-day window.
Texas President Bill Powers represented the Big 12 on the panel and noted that his conference got several key objectives. Among them: a selection committee that will choose the top four teams.
Powers also was happy that playoff remained at four teams, not eight or 16, as some proponents had hoped.
“In my view we don’t want to have a 16-, 17-, 18-game season. There’s an academic calendar,” Powers said. “There were different points of view.
There was a strong consensus among the top group to move forward and a sense this was a big moment in college athletics.” SEC Commissioner MikeSlive, whose teams have won the past six national championships under the current system, was a playoff proponent for years. His proposal in 2008 generated 10 minutes of discussion before it was turned down. Ironically, a January championship game that featured Alabama and LSU in a rematch of a regular-season game might have served as a catalyst for a playoff.
“For me personally, it’s a good feeling,” Slive said.
“We’ve been very successful with the current system.
I think we’re good enough to compete in any scenario and this [playoffs] is a great system.” Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.
How it will work Key components of the four-team seeded major college playoff that will begin following the 2014 regular-season:
The two national semifinal games will be rotated among six bowl sites with the championship game bid to neutral sites, like the Final Four.
A selection committee will choose the four teams based on win-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head meetings and whether the team is a conference champion.
Don’t expect an expansion of a playoff for a while. The new deal will be for 12 years.
Semifinals will be played either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
Revenue distribution from the new TV money will be decided later but will reward conferences for performance on the field. Translation: The rich may get richer.
- The Dallas Morning News
Sports, Pages 19 on 06/27/2012