BCS commissioners returned to their conferences after Thursday with what Bill Hancock called "two to seven" sketches for a future college football playoff. Expect morsels of those plans to leak here and there over the next two months as conferences work to come to their own accords on which work best.
Here's one, as reported by Mark Schlabach, that looks to compromise on several issues surrounding where to play the games and what to do with existing bowls:
The ACC champ would play in the Orange Bowl, Big 12 champ in the Fiesta, Big Ten and Pac-12 champs in the Rose Bowl, and SEC champ in the Sugar Bowl. For instance, if Alabama finished No. 1 in the retooled BCS standings, the Crimson Tide would host the No. 4 seed in a national semifinal game at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. If Oregon finished No. 2, the Ducks would host the No. 3 seed in the Rose Bowl Game presented by VIZIO in Pasadena, Calif.
That means we wouldn't know until the regular season ends which BCS games are playoffs and which are just bowls. This would also give the top-ranked teams some semblance of home advantage, or at least a regional advantage. Alabama fans know how to get to New Orleans, I'm saying.
I'm really not sure why the bowls currently given BCS status would still need to be favored above non-BCS bowls -- the Cotton and Chick-fil-A have tended to do about as well as the Fiesta and Orange, as far as attendance goes. The whole thing's largely about preserving the Rose Bowl and, to a lesser extent, the Sugar, but most fans will go along for the time being with whatever gets a playoff.
Schlabach also reports having a bidding process for the national title game is the strong favorite.
Might this kind of thing be a winning compromise?
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