Posted by Bryan Fischer

LOS ANGELES -- Although the most recent BCS meetings wrapped up two weeks ago in Dallas and the NCAA tournament is fast approaching to steal headlines, discussion about the future of the college football postseason continues to bubble to the surface.

Speaking at the league's annual basketball tournament Wednesday evening, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott cautioned that any movement toward a specific postseason proposal would likely be months away from emerging.

"Once we start to get to the point where a consensus is emerging around a model or two, that's when conferences will be asked to kind of officially vote on something," Scott said. "It's a little hard to predict when exactly but it's probably summertime.

"I don't know if there will be a point where our conference declares exactly what it supports until there's a specific proposal in front of us. We're kind of far from that point and there's a lot more work that I need to do and my colleagues from other conferences need to do to narrow options and think of all the implications."

One of the few details to emerge about any new BCS deal over the past few months is that Scott and the Big Ten's Jim Delany prefer that only conference champions to be eligible for any sort of postseason playoff or plus-one. SEC commissioner Mike Slive, speaking to the Birmingham News earlier Wednesday, naturally disagreed with the notion, no surprise considering the all-SEC nature of the national championship game in January.

Approximately 50 proposals different have been presented to decision makers over the past few months and it seems that just about the only thing that anybody can agree upon is that the process will continue to evolve before everybody comes together again.

"It's an iterative process," Scott said. "The concepts will get more specific. I've been in constant contact with our AD's and presidents over the last few months - with our partners at the Rose Bowl in terms of priorities. We're starting to talk about options."

Which ones, exactly, remain to be seen.

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen

Few individuals -- if any -- will have as large a say in the construction of the impending college football "plus-one" as SEC commissioner Mike Slive. And as of Wednesday, the construction Slive has in mind is one that won't be exclusive to conference champions.

Speaking to the Birmingham News, Slive said that he was "willing to have a conversation" about restricting the field to champions only, but that it wasn't his preference--no surprise, considering it was his conference that wedged its teams into both slots in the 2011 national title game.

"[I]f you were going to ask me today, that would not be the way I want to go," Slive said. "It really is early in the discussions, notwithstanding what some commissioners say publicly. There's still a lot of information that needs to be generated."

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott previously stated his support for admitting conference champions only, though we're not sure that veiled "some commissioners" jibe from Slive is a shot across Scott's bow or not.

What we are sure of is that Slive is more open to Jim Delany's proposal for on-campus semifinals than Scott's regarding league champions. While stopping well short of endorsing the Big Ten-backed suggestion, Slive also noted some of its benefits and kept the door well open to its consideration.

"There are plusses and minuses to that concept," Slive said. "One is that you're playing a couple games to determine the national champion and to make it a home game for somebody has always been perceived as a competitive advantage ... You have to look at that. The other side is there would be the question of fan travel and the ability to travel to one or more games. You guarantee good attendance (on campus) -- for one team.

"It needs to be looked at carefully. It's on the table and it should be on the table."

Slive also again declined to reveal details on the SEC' 2013-and-beyond scheduling arrangements and said the league wasn't interested in expanding beyond its current 14 teams. Of more interest was his comments on the league's ongoing television negotiations, reopened since the addition of Texas A&M and Missouri.

"They know who we are and what we have," Slive said. "None of our schools will be hurt financially (in 2012-13). But that's just today. It's tomorrow that's the real issue. The discussions are very important. They're longterm. We'll leave it at that."

Knowing that Slive's entire willingness to entertain expansion was -- very likely -- motivated first-and-foremost by a desire to rework the league's (mostly) static 15-year TV deal for something closer to the Big Ten and Pac-12's rapidly expanding, league network-driven contracts, could his emphasis on the "very important" "longterm" be commissioner-speak for a push for an SEC Network? 

We'd be stunned, frankly, if it means anything different. Slive's opinions and preferences on the plus-one matter a great deal where the rest of college football is concerned--but when it comes to the distant future of his own conference, those negotiations may be even more critical.

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Posted by Tom Fornelli

He may only be an interim commissioner, and the Big 12 may have already started the process of finding his replacement, but Chuck Neinas is the latest conference commissioner to publicly voice his support of a college football playoff.

Neinas told The Oklahoman's Berry Tramel that he likes the idea of a playoff, and like Roy Kramer and Larry Scott before him, he also thinks sending conference champions would be the way to go.

“I like the idea, if you're going to take four, take four champions,” Neinas said. “They're not hard to identify.

“The selection process is one that would concern me. The easiest is taking four conference champions.”

Neinas also told Tramel he didn't see any downside to college football adopting a playoff format, explaining that college football needs to make changes to maintain what it has. 

“Looking at it very broadly, we've agreed, we've got to do something to maintain public interest. We want a vibrant postseason. We have to explore ideas that will make it better. There's obviously strong support of a four-team arrangement.”

So, to sum it all up, in the last few weeks we've had current, former or interim commissioners from the Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC and the Big 12 publicly support the idea of a four-team playoff. Three of those four have said they think having only conference champions be eligible is the best way to go about it.

So if I can read between the lines here, a college football playoff is coming, and only conference champions will be eligible.

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Posted by Tom Fornelli

With every passing day it seems that the idea of college football adopting a playoff system comes closer and closer to reality. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and former SEC commissioner -- and founder of the BCS -- Roy Kramer have both spoken publicly about the idea in recent weeks, and now the Pac-12's Larry Scott sounds as though he's in favor of a change as well.

Larry Scott talked of his preferences for college football's postseason with the New York Times.

Scott told the paper that while he isn't focusing solely on devising a system to determine a champion, he is thinking about changes to the entire bowl system, conference championships and even rankings.

"The more I think about it, the more opportunity for improvement I see," Scott told the paper.

Scott also said that he agreed with the Big Ten's proposed model of playing semi-final games on the campuses of the schools involved while playing the championship game itself at a neutral location. Scott also supports the idea that only conference champions should be eligible for playing in any sort of playoff format.

“So much of the passion of a move to a playoff is to see it earned on the field,” Scott said. “What more clear way to have intellectual consistency with the idea of a playoff than to earn it as a conference champion? It would de-emphasize the highly subjective polls that are based on a coach and media voting and a few computers.”

Thoughts that echoed the ones Roy Kramer told CBSSports.com's Dennis Dodd last week.

"It makes the conference championship games bigger," Kramer told CBSSports.com. "It makes the regular season bigger."

An idea that likely must be heeded in order to satisfy both those that prefer a more concrete method of determining a champion, such as a playoff, and those who want to make sure college football's regular season doesn't lose its significance.

Now, while nobody can be sure exactly when or if a playoff will be instituted -- no matter the model chosen for one -- it is readily apparent that it will be coming at some point in the near future. An actuality that seemed impossible not too long ago.

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen



It was just before Christmas when SEC commissioner Mike Slive said -- regarding next year's BCS discussions and a potential new look for the system in 2014 -- he would "go to the table with the plus-one very much in mind."

When talking to Tony Barnhart on the CBS Sports Network Wednesday, however, Slive sounded even more firmly in support of a potential college football "Final Four"--and even more convinced that's exactly what's going to happen with the BCS.

"I do think we are going to see changes," Slive said, "and I don't think those changes are going to be tweaks."

When asked if the SEC's run of five (and soon to be six) national titles had changed his previous support of the plus-one -- Slive spearheaded the 2008 push to have it approved -- Slive essentially confirmed that it had not.

"For the past six years, two has been enough," Slive joked. "But I do think the plus-one has to come back to the table. I'm confident we will have a robust conversation."

Slive's full-on support for the plus-one could be the clinching factor in its passage for 2014; with the Big 12 throwing its support behind the proposal in the wake of Oklahoma State's BCS title game snub and Pac-12 athletic directors calling the plus-one "inevitable," Jim Delany and the Big Ten appear to be the only serious opposition. 

For the rest of Slive's interview with Barnhart, watch the video above. And for Mike Gundy's comments on the plus-one, watch his video interview with Tim Brando here.

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Posted by Jerry Hinnen

In 2008, SEC commissioner Mike Slive attempted to float a plus-one "playoff" proposal to revamp the BCS's method of determining a national champion. But even with the ACC's John Swofford also backing the idea and Slive wielding as much influence as anyone in college football, the proposal never got off the ground.

Ironically, that failure has done nothing but help Slive's league since then; buoyed (in part) by the conference's ever-growing reputation as the closest on-field product the college game has to the NFL, the SEC has won five straight national titles and will add a sixth when LSU faces off against Alabama on Jan. 9--a spot the Tide won in the polls over Big 12 champion Oklahoma State despite finishing second in the Tide's own division behind the Bayou Bengals.

So with the curent system playing to his teams' advantage like that, has Slive tempered his support for the plus-one? Judging from this interview with the Birmingham News, it doesn't sound like it:

"For the last six years, looking at it from our own prism, we were better off without it ... If I knew that for six more years it was going to work this way then I wouldn't be for the plus-one. But I think the law of averages catches up over time.

"Knowing that any team in our league with one or two losses is one of the top two teams in the country, then I'd have to think very hard about the plus-one absent other kinds of changes. There may be other changes that are laid out on the table that need to be clearly thought out. But we'll go to the table with the plus-one very much in mind." 

Slive added that he would be "interested" to discover if conferences other than his own (and Swofford's) would support the plus-one if re-introduced. The Big 12 appears to be on board in the wake of the Oklahoma State snub, and while Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott has not committed himself one way or another, his league's athletic directors have both voted in favor of one potential four-team playoff format and called the plus-one "inevitable." The Big Ten and Jim Delany may be the only holdouts, meaning that if Slive is still entirely behind the 2008 proposal (or something similar), there may be no stopping it when the BCS convenes in 2012.

Slive declined to discuss the likelihood of the dissolution of the BCS's automatic-qualifying status for conference champions, or other changes to the BCS selection process.

"There are lots of different ways to think about it and to overemphasize any one issue would be premature," he said.