Pac-12, Big Ten Support Plus-One Bowl Format For College Football, According To Report

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Athletics directors for the two conferences have apparently embraced the notion of the most limited form of a playoff. If college presidents back them up on the proposal, it could reshape the college postseason.

Aug 12, 2011 - The strongest resistance to any change to the current BCS ~~monstrosity~~ format for choosing a national championship has always comes from the Pac-12 and the Big Ten. That's not entirely fair -- the Pac-12 and the Big Ten fought the BCS to begin with, preferring to stick with the Rose Bowl, until reality prevailed on them.

But now, if a report in The Seattle Times is to be believed, the resistance to at least instituting a plus-one might be crumbling. Athletics directors in the two conferences have apparently thrown their weight behind the idea, as long as the Rose Bowl is protected from having to host such meager games.

The proposed format the ADs favored in a straw vote calls for adding a BCS bowl, probably the Cotton in Dallas, and seeding the top four teams, which would play semifinal games in two BCS bowls on a rotating basis. Presumably, the current BCS formula still would be used to rank teams. Winners would advance to a title game in what has become known as a "plus-one" format.

In this format, the Rose Bowl wouldn't host semifinal games in exchange for the right to preserve an annual matchup of the Big Ten and Pac-12, but would host the title game every five years.

There's still a long way to go before this becomes anything like a formal proposal, most notably the fact that the even more anti-playoff presidents will still have their say. But the fact that officials in the two leagues who have traditionally formed the core of the pro-status quo faction would move toward a playoff is still significant. If the Pac-12 and Big Ten can be convinced to go along with a plus-one system, convincing some of the other conferences shouldn't be that hard.