how the plus-one could work

The four bowls would rotate hosting a semifinal and the championship game. You need three sites each year to accomplish that (two semis, one title game).

The Rose Bowl would sit out its turn at the semifinals, preferring to instead host a traditional Big Ten/Pac-12 matchup on Jan. 1 every year. As they do now, they would “double-host” once every four years – the traditional Rose Bowl and the title game a week later. This is a plan the Rose itself expressed interest in during a meeting last summer between Big Ten and Pac-12 athletic directors, as first reported by the Seattle Times.

Here’s how it would look this season. All the other bowl games would continue as is; nothing would change there. But this would be your Jan. 2 schedule:

1:30 p.m.: Orange, No. 2 Alabama vs. No. 3 Oklahoma State.
4:30 p.m.: Rose, Oregon vs. Wisconsin.
8:30 p.m.: Fiesta, No. 1 LSU vs. No. 4 Stanford.

Is that a day of football you might be interested in?

On Jan. 9, the winners of the Orange and Fiesta then would meet in the Sugar Bowl for the national title.

Next season, it would rotate. Since the Rose would be involved only once every four seasons, over a 12-year period the other three games would be left out of the Football Final Four just once each.