Bear in mind that this season is an aberration, and that I’m a normal year, final regular season rankings and conference champions would be a better representation of quality than this season.
FBS football is comprised of 124 teams across 10 conferences and 7 Independents.
I would introduce a playoff that provides entry to each conference champion, and 6 at-large teams, to account for the fact that the power 5 conferences often have 2+ teams that are playoff worthy.
This provides potential access to all 1A teams, and quickly weeds out inferior teams.
Opt outs would become a thing of the past, as a lot of meaningful football would get played in the postseason.
There would be 15 total games, and would utilize the major bowls for locations. It adds 1 game to the current max total for 4 teams, and 2 games additional for 2 teams. 5 teams would play the same number of games that championship teams currently play.
The regular season would continue to have meaning, because the goal would continue to be to win your conference championship as the best means of securing a playoff spot.
The at-large teams would be selected using a BCS-type mix of computer polls and human rankings. The top 6 ranked teams that are not conference champions would be picked as at-large teams. Independents would need to do well enough to get selected to an at-large bid (or join a conference - I’m looking at you Notre Dane)
• This year, the automatic qualifiers (for winning their conference championships) would be:
- Alabama (SEC)
- Clemson (ACC)
- Ohio State (Big 10)
- Cincinnati (AAC)
- Oklahoma (Big 12)
- UAB (Conf USA)
- Ball St (MAC)
- San Jose St (MWC)
- Oregon (PAC 12)
- Coastal Carolina (Sun Belt)
•The at-large teams (using Sagarin ratings as a proxy for BCS) would be;
- Georgia
- Florida
- Notre Dame
- Texas A&M
- Iowa
- Iowa State
•Seeding these teams (also using Sagarin as a proxy for the BCS formula) becomes:
- Alabama
- Ohio State
- Clemson
- Oklahoma
- Georgia
- Florida
- Notre Dame
- Texas A&M
- Iowa
- Iowa State
- Oregon
- Cincinnati
- Coastal Carolina
- SJSU
- Ball St
- UAB
• Opening weekend matchups would pair highest and lowest ranked teams. Using the current bowl configurations, and ranking bowls in order of payoffs, it would look like this
Dec 25-26
G1:Texas-Iowa / Duke’s Mayo
G2:Notre Dame-Iowa St / Gator
G3:Florida-Oregon / Music City
G4:Georgia-Cincinnati / Cheez-It
G5:Oklahoma-Coastal Carolina / Texas Bowl
G6:Clemson-SJSU / Outback
G7:Ohio St-Ball St / Citrus
G8:Alabama-UAB / Alamo
Jan 1-2
G9: G4 vs G5 / Cotton
G10: G3 vs G6 / Peach
G11: G2 vs G7 / Rose
G12: G1 vs G8 / Sugar
Jan 9
G13: G9 vs G 12 / Fiesta
G14: G10 vs G11 / Orange
Jan 16
G15: G13 vs G14 / CFP Championship
There are some good matchups the first weekend, and potentially very good matchups for New Years weekend as well. There would be more relevant football to watch during the holidays, and P5 conferences get more opportunities to put teams into meaningful postseason games.
You’d no longer having a situation where an undefeated SEC team like Auburn gets left out (BCS caused this), or a situation where an undeserving media darling like Ohio St edges out a more deserving team like Texas A&M (though seeing Jimbo miss out doesn’t really bother me).
I know that I’ll get flamed for this by folks who resist anything other than a human poll-driven 1v2 matchup, but for most everybody else, I think this ticks all of the boxes. Flame away!