The Pac-12 is wrapping up negotiations with existing and new bowl partners for the cycle of games that begins in 2014 and coincides with the arrival of the College Football Playoff.

Sources say that everything should be finalized by the end of the month, with announcements in early June.

The contracts are six years (longer than in the past).

Before we get to specifics of the lineup, let’s address a few big-picture matters relevant to all the major conferences:

The commissioners have been more involved than in past negotiations because of the prevailing sentiment that tweak to the bowl system (above and beyond the four-team playoff) are needed. As one source said: “It’s a good time to re-examine the landscape and the financial model.” Ticket guarantees will almost certainly be reduced so that schools aren’t on the hook for thousands of tickets they can’t possibly sell, especially at full price (the growth of the secondary market has changed the bowl ticket dynamics).

Another issue on the commissioners’ agenda: Destination fatigue. One example of this is Michigan, which has played three of its last four bowl games in Florida. But there are instances in every conference of teams returning frequently to the same region/state/city … and fans becoming disinterested. As a result, the conferences are revamping the selection-and-assignment process to create more destination diversity. (Multiple media outlets have reported that the Big Ten will replace the Big 12 in the Holiday Bowl, with a Pac-12 team presumably on the other side.) Look for contracts with partner bowls to be structured in a manner that limits the number of times Team X can play in Bowl Y within a certain number of years.

I heard the phrase “matchups that make sense” several times during conversations with sources. In the case of the Pac-12, here’s what I believe it means: It means not sending 6-6 Arizona State to the Las Vegas Bowl to face 11-1 Boise State. Matchups of that nature — Boise State 56, ASU 24, by the way — undermine the bowl experience for everyone involved; they don’t enhance it. So in addition to tweaks to the Pac-12 partnerships, we could very well see changes in the slotting of matchups and the conference pairings.