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NCAA Football: Playoff Format Coming In 2014

Notre Dame's Jack Swarbrick.

The BCS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick on endorsed a seeded four-team playoff model for college football that would begin for the 2014 season.

The commissioners’ consensus must be approved by the BCS presidential oversight committee, which meets June 26 in Washington, D.C. If approved, the four-team playoff would replace the current BCS system, which has been in place since 1998.

Sources told ESPN.com that under the recommended model, four participating teams would be selected by a committee, which would consider certain criteria such as conference championships and strength of schedule.

The two national semifinal games would be played within the existing BCS bowl games (Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar) on a rotating basis, with the host sites being predetermined before each season. The national championship game would be offered to the highest bidding city.

“We’re very unified,” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany said. “There are issues that have yet to be finalized. There’s always devil in the detail, from the model to the selection process, but clearly we’ve made a lot of progress.”

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