This much is clear: A football Final Four is coming.
Conference commissioners left a meeting last month with a mandate to develop a four-team playoff starting at the end of the 2014 regular season, once the current Bowl Championship Series contract expires.
BCS executive director Bill Hancock said 11 conference commissioners - plus the Notre Dame athletic director - were told to present options to their leagues at conference meetings.
They hoped to agree on a plan as early as June.
Now comes the hard part. Officials must figure out where the semifinals and finals would be played; how current bowl games fit in, if at all; and most importantly, how to pickthe four teams.
"How's it going to get voted on? Who's going to make the decision on who's 1-4?" Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez asked earlier this week.
It was a question debated last week at Pac-12 meetings in Phoenix.
"How do you find a common ground that's an equal playing field for everybody, 'OK, these are the four best teams?'" Washington coach Steve Sarkisian asked.
Oregon's Chip Kelly joked he'd be in favor of a system that includes the top team from the state of Oregon, every year.
"The questions all of us asked at the Pac-12 meetings … 'How are the teams going to be picked?'" Kelly said. "No one really has that answer.
"Until we get that answer, I'll reserve judgment on whether it's a good system."
Whether the four teams are limited to conference champions or chosen at-large is a main issue. If the teams are picked at-large, it could come via pollsters, a computer formula, or both. Or a new system.
Rodriguez said that "the more people making the decision, the better." That way, he said, there's "more of a consensus."
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham disagreed.
"I want to get away from people voting to determine who's going to get a shot," he said. "I'm anti-vote to begin with."
Part of his rationale has to do with Pac-12 geography.
"I guess if you look at the time zones, and with populations so much greater on the East Coast," he said, "by the time a lot of the games come on in the West, it's pretty late out there…
"(But) just getting away from a vote in general is something I think needs to happen."
Arizona State coach Todd Graham said he would "hate to see a four-team playoff, and you have two of those teams from the same conference."
Not that he thinks four teams is the way to go.
"I'd have been for going eight teams and having six conference champions and have two at-large, if they're going to do it the right way," he said.
Other league coaches agreed with his assessment, though the four-team model has overwhelming national momentum.
Like Graham, Whittingham favored inviting the six major conference champions and two at-large teams.
"I think if we're going to go into the playoff system, let's go full-fledged into it and get eight teams involved," Whittingham said.
"One of the sentiments" at the league meeting was that an eight-team playoff "would probably give everybody an equal chance," Cal's Jeff Tedford said.
"If we're going to do the playoff thing," he said, "then let's do it whole-heartedly and go after it."
If the four-team plan is adopted, officials still need to determine how the current bowl structure fits in.
For Pac-12 and Big Ten schools, and their fans, preserving the relevance of the Rose Bowl seems to be a top priority.
Where the "Grandaddy of Them All" fits into the new world order of college football, however, is a long way from being decided.
"The Rose Bowl's pretty important," Graham said. "It's one of those things that's very, very important to us, and very important to our fans."
On StarNet: Catch any updates about Arizona Wildcats football on Ryan Finley's blog at azstarnet.com/finley
Please Wait…
