The BCS meetings in Chicago concluded minutes ago with some great news for college football fans: a consensus was reached regarding the four team playoff proposal. A four team seeded playoff model was completely agreed upon, and now the conference commissioners will take it to their University Presidents and Athletic Directors.
(update: the Presidents have met in D.C. and approved the plan)
It appears this model will get approval, as there seems to be a lot of momentum behind it. Most details were not disseminated to the media, as the conference commissioners mostly agreed that they “didn’t want their University Presidents to learn the details by reading the paper.”
They want to tell them the details in person first.Today’s announcement came in the Camelot Room of the Hotel Intercontinental. Fitting, since this was a “round table” of the most powerful commissioners in college football.
Here’s the official statement, which was just read to the media by Notre Dame A.D. Jack Swarbrick.
BCS Conference Commissioners and Notre Dame Athletics Director — June 13, 2012
We made progress in our meeting today to discuss the future of college football’s post-season. We are approaching consensus on many issues, and we recognize there are also several issues that require additional conversations at both the commissioner and university president levels.
We are determined to build upon our successes and create a structure that further grows the sport while protecting the regular season. We also value the bowl tradition and recognize the many benefits it brings to student-athletes.
We have more work to do and more discussions to have with our presidents, who are the parties that will make the final decisions about the future structure of college football’s post-season.
And here some other good soundbites Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany:
“The football postseason has evolved.”
“We resolved things that seemed irreconcilable for quite some time.”
“There is complete unanimity on the importance of the regular season, it’s a unique sport, we didn’t want to do anything to upset that.”
“People always want to see expanded playoffs, you see it in all the professional sports, you see it in the NCAA Tournament, there’s always movement for more of that, more ice cream, more bowls, so we want to make sure what we’ve done is sensible and can be managed over time.”
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site generating millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Chicago Tribune.com, Fox Sports, MSN, Walter Football and Yardbarker
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