A college football playoff is in the works

The BCS conferences have reportedly agreed to devise a four-team playoff for the college football championship:

College football is on the verge of finally having a playoff, its own version of the final four.

For the first time, all the power brokers who run the highest level of the sport are comfortable with the idea of deciding a championship the way it’s done from pee-wees to pros. And the way fans have been hoping they would for years.

“Yes, we’ve agreed to use the P word,” Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said Thursday.

They want to limit it to four teams. That’s for sure. Now they have to figure out how to pick the teams, where and when to play the games and how the bowls do or do not fit in. The new postseason format would go into effect for the 2014 season.

As for the 14-year-old Bowl Championship Series, it’s on life support. Any chance that it survives past the next two seasons? “I hope not,” said Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive, who pitched a four-team playoff four years ago but was shot down at this same hotel beachside hotel.

“This is a seismic change for college football,” BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock said after the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director wrapped up three days of meetings in south Florida.

That Hancock actually used the word playoff when describing what was being considered alone signaled a shift in thinking for the BCS. In a memo leading up to these meetings, the term “four-team event” was used to describe creating two national semifinals and a championship game.

via Finally? BCS on verge of becoming 4-team college playoff, though plenty of details to workout – The Washington Post.

OK, but the little question of how to arrive at the four playoff teams has got to be resolved, given that there are 11 conferences at the table.  It sounds like BCS will just do their polls/computer thing to arrive at the final four, just as they have been doing to decide the bowl match ups and the championship, so that the controversies will continue.  Still, a four-game tournament would be exciting and an improvement.

Does anyone have any ideas about how else to determine the top four contenders?  How about just have the conference winners of the Big 12, the Big 10, the Pac-12, and the SEC play each other and be done with it?