Bowl Championship Series (BCS) administrators voted during their April 25-27 meeting in Phoenix to open automatic qualification to BCS bowl games to all Division I-A conferences beginning with the 2007 season.

The policy will change qualifying procedures that have been in place since the BCS was established in 1998, when the champions of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences, and the University of Notre Dame could earn automatic-qualifying spots into BCS games. Other criteria recently were adopted to include institutions outside of those six conferences. The University of Utah from the Mountain West Conference earned a berth in the Fiesta Bowl last season.

One of the standards for maintaining an automatic bid to BCS games was the average finish in the BCS standings of a conference's top team over a four-year period. A conference's overall strength now will be added to the criteria. The BCS will take into account the number of teams in a conference that finish in the standings' top 25 over a four-year period.

There will be an appeals process if a conference doesn't meet the criteria but still believes it belongs in the BCS.

The change accompanies an earlier modification in the BCS structure that accommodates a fifth BCS game. Beginning in 2006, the BCS will consist of five games -- the Rose Bowl, the Nokia Sugar Bowl, the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and the FedEx Orange Bowl, plus the championship game between the two top-ranked teams. The championship game will be played at the site of one of the other four bowls on a rotating basis. The first title game in the new format is tentatively scheduled January 8, 2007, in Tempe, Arizona. The Fiesta Bowl will have been played at the same site January 1.

Current NCAA playing and practice season legislation requires bowl games to be played no later than January 4, so a proposal would have to be submitted in the 2005-06 legislative cycle year for the BCS date formula to work.

The flexibility in qualification and the addition of a bowl may address concerns from some conferences that believed previous policies did not provide equal access to the BCS.

BCS officials also are considering modifications to its selection formula necessitated when the Associated Press told the BCS it could no longer use its top-25 poll as a criterion. There was talk of developing another poll with voters consisting of former coaches, former players, administrators and possibly members of the media, but the idea was shelved for further review.