BCS Meeting: It's All In The Details
By Ralph D. Russo
NEW YORK (AP) — No promises for a playoff, but the guys who run college football will meet next week as they inch toward making major changes to the postseason.
BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Tuesday that the meetings in south Florida on April 24-26 will not result in a final decision on how major college football will determine its champions, starting in 2014.
The goal instead for the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director is to come away with several very specific and detailed options for the leagues to consider when they begin meeting individually next month.
"This is not the final meeting," Hancock said.
BCS officials are sticking to their self-imposed, mid-summer deadline for having a future postseason format completed. Though Hancock says it is "not a given" the BCS will switch to some type of four-team playoff.
There are versions of one being considered. A memo to college football officials, first reported by USA Today last week and obtained by the AP, details four options for the future of the Bowl Championship Series.
One is sticking with the current system with some tweaks, like eliminating automatic bids.
Another is a traditional looking playoff, with four seeded teams playing in semifinals and the winners advancing to a championship game. But there are four ways to set up that type of playoff being discussed, including playing the games in bowls, playing the game at neutral sites away from the traditional bowls or playing the semifinals on campuses.
The others have the participants in the championship game being selected after the bowls are played.
"There are so many details, intricacies to this," Hancock said.
