The presidential oversight committee met in Washington on Tuesday to BCS commissioners' plan for a four-team playoff system which will begin in 2014 and run for an estimated 10 years.
The TV package deal has yet to be finalized, but it is expected to be worth in the region of $5 Billion in revenue over the lifetime of the contract.
Fan's of college football have been crying out to the footballing heavens shortly after the inception of the BCS system in 1998.
Controversy flourished in the current BCS system in an attempt to match the number #1 and number #2 ranked teams in the country.
In 2001, for example, Oregon, second ranked in the AP poll, was bypassed in favor of Nebraska despite Nebraska's loss in its final regular season game to the University of Colorado by a score of 62-36.
In 2003, USC was not included in the BCS Championship Game, but beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and ended up #1 in the Associated Press final poll.
The following season, in 2004, undefeated Auburn University, Boise State University and University of Utah teams were left out of the National Championship Game (the FedEx Orange Bowl), although those teams were undefeated as well.
In 2008, the University of Utah was excluded from the BCS championship for a second time despite being the only undefeated Division I-A team at the end of the season and finished second behind 13–1 Florida.
In 2009, five schools finished the regular season undefeated: Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, Texas Christian University, and Boise State; however, the BCS selected traditional powers Alabama and Texas to participate in the BCS National Championship Game as they were the top two teams in the BCS rankings.
It was the end of the 2009 season that served as the catalyst in having the powers that be eventually concede to the fact that the BCS solution was flawed and they had to come up with a way to put a fairer and more transparent way to determine the #1 team in the nation.
Not only did the fans voice their discontent with the current BCS selection process, but the controversy had even reached congress. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch asked President Barrack Obama for a probe of the BCS, stating that the postseason selections process violated antitrust law.
President Obama had said at the time he favored a playoff series, as undefeated teams such as the University of Utah, Boise State University and Texas Christian University recently weren’t able to qualify under the BCS system to play for the national title
The proposed system will make such controversies a lot less frequent......but not impossible. Should five teams remain undefeated, just like the 2009 BCS standings, then we would be faced with similar controversies.
Instead of matching the nation's #1 and #2 teams in a BCS championship game after the regular season, the new format will have two national semifinals where #1 will play #4, and #2 will play #3.
The sites of those games will rotate among the four current BCS games - Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar with two more bowls that have yet to be determined.
The winner of both semi-finals will contest the National Championship game.
"By making this change we felt we could enhance the regular season but at the same time provide the fans with the kind of postseason that will contribute to the regular season" SEC commissioner Mike Slive said.
Jason writes for IrishCentral and domersportsreport You can find him on twitter at @jayomahony
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