Four-Team College Football Playoff Approved WASHINGTON - Big-time college football will finally get a post-season playoff in the 2014 season. Alex Brandon/Associated Press From left, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany, B.C.S. executive director Bill Hancock and S.E.C. Commissioner Mike Slive after the new playoff plan was approved on Tuesday. The Coaches' Trophy before the B.C.S. National Championship game in January, which the University of Alabama won. The current, much-derided method for producing a champion, the Bowl Championship Series, will be replaced by a four-team playoff, the B.C.S. Presidential Oversight Committee announced Tuesday. The four national semifinalists will be selected by a committee, much like in the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. No conference will automatically qualify one of its teams. The two semifinal games will be rotated among six bowl sites over a 12-year period, and will be played on either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Those bowls have not been selected yet. The championship game will be held at a neutral site, and cities will have the opportunity to bid on the event, much like the Super Bowl. The game will be played on the first Monday in January that is six or more days after the semifinals. The committee approved the plan, which was proposed by the commissioners of the B.C.S. conferences, ending a six-month period that was filled with meetings, proposals and seemingly more questions than answers. "Where we've arrived, I think, is a consensus built on compromise," said John Swofford, the commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The selection committee's makeup has not been determined, but its criteria for evaluating teams will include record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, and whether it is a conference champion. "It's a best-of-both worlds result," said Charles Steger, the president of Virginia Tech. It captures the excitement of a playoff while protecting the best regular season in sports, and also the tradition of the bowls. Nebraska president Harvey Perlman said he advocated for a so-called plus-one model that would have added a championship game after the bowl season is complete, but he said he supported the system that was announced on Tuesday.