Plan to Add BCS Game Is OKd

As expected, bowl championship series commissioners Wednesday approved a tentative plan called “double hosting” for staging college football bowl games.

The format, to be introduced in bowl games following the 2006 season, calls for each of the four BCS bowls -- Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta -- to play host to two games every four years; their annual game plus a BCS championship game about a week later.

Many details need to be worked out, but the “double hosting” concept makes unnecessary a plan to add a fifth BCS bowl game to the national title rotation, an idea that was approved in February by college presidents.

The fifth-bowl concept was proposed as a way to create two more “at-large” access berths into multimillion-dollar BCS games. Schools from the five “non-BCS” conferences had threatened legal action, claiming the BCS was a monopoly.

Under the new plan, schools from non-BCS conferences will earn an automatic BCS bid if they finish ranked 12th or better in the final BCS standings.

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-- Chris Dufresne