changes coming to the BCS?

[6/21/12] CHICAGO » The BCS commissioners are backing a playoff plan with the sites for the national semifinals rotating among the major bowl games and a selection committee picking the teams.

The plan will be presented to university presidents next week for approval.

Once the presidents sign off — and that seems likely — major college football's champion will be decided by a playoff for the first time starting in 2014.

"We are excited to be on the threshold of creating a new postseason structure for college football that builds on the great popularity of our sport," Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick said Wednesday.

All 11 commissioners stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind Swarbrick, who read the BCS statement from a podium set up in a hotel conference room.

The commissioners have been working on reshaping college football's postseason since January. The meeting Wednesday was the sixth formal get-together of the year. They met for four hours and emerged with a commitment to stand behind a plan.

"I think we're very unified," Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said.

The commissioners refrained from providing specifics of the plan in their announcement.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott did say the two semifinals would be worked into the existing major bowls and the site of the national championship game will be bid out to any city that wants it the way the NFL does it with the Super Bowl.

People with firsthand knowledge of the decision tell The Associated Press the semifinals of the proposed plan would rotate among the major bowls and not be tied to traditional conference relationships.

They also said that under the plan a selection committee would choose the schools that play for the national title.

[4/27/12]  SEC Commissioner Mike Slive came here four years ago with a plan to remake the Bowl Championship Series by creating two national semifinals to determine which teams played for the national championship.

Not only was Slive's proposal shot down by his fellow commissioners, he wasn't even allowed to call it a playoff.

Now, for the first time, all the power brokers who run major college football are ready to have its championship decided the way it's done from peewees to the pros. And the way fans have been hoping they would for years.

"I've always tried not to use the dreaded P word," Slive said Thursday. "But now we're all using it. So what the heck."

Yes, major college football is on the verge of implementing a playoff, its own version of the final four. Two semifinals and a title game.

"I'm very stunned," said former Alabama running back and Cleveland Browns draft pick Trent Richardson, who won two BCS championship games with the Crimson Tide.

There's still plenty left to figure out, though. First of all, where and when to play the games and how the bowls fit in. After that, Slive and his cohorts have to come up with a way to select the four teams. The new postseason format would go into effect for the 2014 season.

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The Bowl Championship Series as college football fans have come to know it is going away.

Over the next six months, the people who oversee the much-maligned postseason system will talk about how to deconstruct the system for crowning a national champion. In the tumultuous 14-year history of the BCS, never has there been more of an appetite for change among college football's leaders.

"It's my impression that ... there will be meaningful discussion about possible changes to the BCS," Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive said Thursday as SEC rivals LSU and Alabama prepared to play in the title game Monday night at the Superdome.

What the changes will be is hard to say because nearly everything seems to be up for discussion, from eliminating automatic bids to top-tier bowl games to creating a four-team playoff — an idea that's known as the plus-one model.

What's not on the table is exactly what many football fans are clamoring for, a full-scale playoff that would require numerous teams to play additional games.