"The devil is in the details."
It has been the most common phrase used by commissioners during the BCS postseason meetings. Even after Wednesday's historic announcement about an endorsed four-team playoff, commissioners cautioned that many details still must be worked out, even if the BCS presidential oversight committee signs off on the model next week in Washington D.C.
Colleague Mark Schlabach breaks down the remaining questions and the work still left to do in this excellent BCS primer. Be sure and give it a read.
Among the topics Schlabach addresses are location of games and revenue:
The committee will still have the authority to send a Pac-12 team to the Rose Bowl or an ACC team to the Orange Bowl for semifinal games if they're ranked in the top two. Traditional matchups and geography will still be considered while seeding the teams and placing them in semifinal games. The commissioners have agreed to offer the national championship game to the highest bidding city on an annual basis, like the NFL does with the Super Bowl. The host cities of the current BCS bowl games -- Miami, New Orleans, Pasadena, Calif., and Glendale, Ariz. -- would be eligible to bid on the championship game. It isn't immediately clear whether those bowls would be allowed to double-host semifinal and championship games. Cities that have been left out of the BCS system until this point, such as Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis, also would be allowed to bid on the championship game. ...
The top five conferences -- ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC -- will undoubtedly receive the largest share of the purse. The Big East, which lost TCU and West Virginia to the Big 12 this year, and will lose Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the ACC in 2014, will probably receive a much smaller share than what it earns in the current BCS system. The commissioners are considering a revenue sharing model that would reward revenue based on a league's past performance in the BCS standings since 1998. Delany said this week he would like academic performance to be a consideration in how the money is divided.
The point about Midwest cities getting involved in the national title game bidding should pique the interest of Big Ten fans. Officials from Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium, Detroit's Ford Field and St. Louis' Edward Jones Dome told ESPN.com in April that their venues are interested on bidding for the national title game.