NEW ORLEANS — The Bowl Championship Series as college football fans have come to know it might be going away.
During the next six months, the people who oversee the much-maligned postseason format will talk about how to reconstruct the system for crowning a national champion.
"It's my impression that ... there will be meaningful discussion about possible changes to the BCS," Southeastern Conference commissioner Mike Slive said.
The 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame's athletic director will meet today in New Orleans to exchange ideas.
What the changes will be is hard to say because it's all open for debate, from eliminating automatic bids to top-tier bowl games to creating a four-team playoff — an idea that's known as the plus-one model.
What's not a realistic option is exactly what many football fans are clamoring for, a full-scale playoff that would require numerous teams to play additional games.
"Whatever we do we have to protect the regular season," BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Monday. "I think the larger the playoff field the more damage to the regular season."
The last time changes were considered was 2008. That's when Slive, with the support of the ACC, made a push for the plus-one model to the rest of the group. The proposal was shot down.
The plus-one would match the No. 1 team in the BCS standings after the regular season against the No. 4 team in a bowl game, and No. 2 against No. 3 in another, creating two national semifinals.
The winners would play in a championship game the following week.
Currently, the top two teams in the BCS standings after the regular season, including conference championships, advance to the title game. It's a format that's led to frequent debates about whether the right teams were getting a shot to play for a national title.
This year's controversy involved whether Alabama should get a second chance at undefeated LSU or if Big 12 champion Oklahoma State had earned a shot to play for the national title.
Standing in the way of the plus-one last time were the Big Ten, Pac-10, Big East and Big 12.
Since then, the Pac-10 has become the Pac-12 and it has a new commissioner, Larry Scott, who has quickly established himself as one of the most forward-thinking leaders in college sports. Previous commissioner Tom Hansen was adamantly against a plus-one. Scott is willing to listen.
What hasn't changed is the Big Ten's stance, led by its influential commissioner, Jim Delany, who is steadfastly against a full-blown playoff and has said his biggest fear with the plus-one would be that once a four-team playoff becomes a reality it would inevitably grow.
But Delany favors another potentially major change to how all the other marquee bowl games are set: the elimination of automatic bids.
The Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, ACC, SEC and Pac-12 champions receive automatic entry into the BCS. One champion from the Mountain West, the Western Athletic Conference, the Sun Belt, the Mid-American and Conference USA can potentially earn an automatic bid each season by reaching certain BCS standings targets.
