NCAA bylaws require half the field to be at-large bids. So six-and-two wouldn't work. I've been told a couple things in response to this: 1) Bylaws can be changed. Counterpoint: Yes, they can, but the bosses aren't going to look at the round hole they have to fit their peg in, make a square peg just because they want to, and then attempt to reshape the hole. It's backwards thinking. If they ever sit down to craft a playoff, they'll look at the existing realities and then build something to fit. 2) The NCAA doesn't run the current system; who says they'd run a new playoff? Counterpoint: If the playoff really is the money machine playoff proponents say it is, the NCAA will appropriate it with a quickness. Besides, playoffs aren't going to work on neutral sites, which is all the BCS has power over. The BCS is an alliance of bowl games, which don't have the ability to tell the schools to host a series of playoff games. So we're back to the problem of the NCAA bylaws, and that plus my belief that autobids are here to stay means that 12 is the bare minimum and 16 is more likely, if a playoff is to be implemented.

The tangible reward for winning a conference wouldn't change. Right now, a conference title comes with a guaranteed spot in a bowl game, it could still do that if there was a playoff.

1.) I don't see how anything is truly going to change from now when it comes to conferences. If you win your conference you're going to a bowl game, are deemed conference champions, and will have the best chance to get into the playoff from their conference. It's the same as it is now, except instead of hoping to get into the NCG you're simply hoping you get into the playoff. 2.) This is why a selection via committee is so key. If you load up on a super weak OOC schedule you'd be hurting yourself in the eyes of the committee. In all honesty, I again believe not much would change from the current setup. 3.) I simply disagree completely. If there was a playoff this year you honestly think that Ohio State or Oregon would be selected ahead of Boise State and TCU? A playoff gives those smaller schools an actual chance at getting a NC. The current system doesn't.

I like going with at least eight with no autobids. I like the idea of a committee, too. I used to like the idea of going to sixteen teams, incorporating the large conference playoff games, but would settle for a committee choosing eight after they are over. Almost no major conference champions would be jilted by a committee, anyway, unless they really deserved it. Let's say, for example, Miami lost to BYU, Kansas, and Cal, then won the ACC at 7-1 for an 8-4 record. I would have no problem with them being passed over for a more deserving team, like an 11-1 Michigan team that lost to OSU. Other than that, I can't really see a scenario where any conference champion wouldn't get picked anyway. As for home games, I can take them or leave them. I know a lot of people love the "frozen tundra game," but I would rather see players play in domes or warm weather sites. I also know that some think a team should be "rewarded with a home game," but if they are truly deserving of a home game, then they can win at a neutral site. A "regional" setup could have games in Indy (midwest), Atlanta(east), Texas(south), and California(west). Then, two BCS bowls could be used for the semis, and the championship game could be played a week after the bowls, just like it is now. This would not disrupt the bowls at all. Those citing travel inconvenience for the fanbase could look at what most other sports do, and realize that such inconveninces are standard operating precedure for most sports fans. The regional game would allow each team to buy half of the available tickets, which would be quite fair. Anyway, like the systems of Wahoo, Brian, and marvel99, this would be very simple, as fair as you can really expect, and would give fans and players a true champion. In other words, it makes too much sense for the NCAA to even consider.

Here is the solution for you and Brian. No autobids for conference champion, but you can't be selected ahead of your league chanpion. Example is ACC does their usual and the conference champ is a 8-4 Georgia Tech team. On the other hand the SEC has 11-1 LSU that is blocked from the champ game due to their loss to Florida 12-0. Florida get knocked of by 10-2 Alabama. In order for LSU and Florida to get in the playoff you have to invite Alabama, but you're not locked into a mediocre GT team and the conf champs don't have to be worried about getting jumped if they had a bad OOC record thus encouraging better OOC schedules.

I like the idea of 8 (six auto bids; 2 at-large bids). Things are pretty straight forward - you win your conference, you get in the playoff. I'm sure people will point out that this year a system like this would have been messy as you would have at least 3 teams with legitimate claims of deserving an at-large bid (TCU, Boise St, Florida) But arguing about who gets to be the 8th team in a tournament is still a big improvement over arguing who gets to play in the single "championship" game. One important "Howeva" regarding non-conference schedules. The biggest reason that colleges pad schedules with cupcakes has nothing to do with ducking the competition. It is all about the $$$. The big teams want their non-conference schedule to have as many home games as possible, and this deters home-and-home agreements from occurring. If we had a playoff that guaranteed Big Ten teams a bid for winning the conference, Rich Rod, Tressel, and others would have no problem scheduling a couple games each "pre-season" against teams like USC, Oregon, Texas, Fla, etc. But this would mean having 2 road games in the non-conference each year and the ADs wouldn't allow this. They need the extra home games to keep the $$$ rolling in.

I wrote up a diary post about two years ago with almost the same exact plan... I'm with you brother! I think the majority of America would accept it. Plus we will never have to hear that one conference utterly dominates the rest unless its teams prove it (COUGH SEC COUGH). http://mgoblog.com/diaries/making-playoff-scheme-thing-do

Interesting. A good playoff system would solve some problems, but while this diary does hope to solve the problem, the real problem is that everyone has a different bracket/scenario and the lack of people getting behind just a few ideas is preventing the dismantling of an established, albeit flawed, system. Whoever has the influence/power needs to adopt a system and get people behind it to even get close to challenging the BCS. Hopefully that happens while they "review" the process. To me the BCS is worse than the old bowl system and whatever playoff would be decided on.

You all are approaching this as if we were starting from scratch. We are not starting from scratch. The six major conferences (and even the other conferences) have substantial vested interests in the current bowl and BCS systems. Unless you deal with these vested interests and convince the key decision-makers involved that the new system is better (or, at a minimum, not worse) for them, they will never agree to it and it will never happen. The first and most difficult issue to deal with is the fact that the six major conferences currently receive automatic bids to the four major bowls. The six major conferences actually own some of the bowls and are not going to agree to anything that either significantly diminishes those bowls or requires the conferences to give up their annual automatic bids to those bowls. Therefore, unless someone successfully sues the major conferences and forces a change (and that appears unlikely), any idea for a playoff must preserve the six automatic bids to the four major bowls and the money that goes with those bids. Moreover, the new system cannot diminish the profile of the four major bowls or disturb the traditional conference tie-ins. Any attempt to do either of these things will be a non-starter. The second issue to deal with is the four at-large bids. Prior to going to a 5th BCS game (the NC game), it would have been easy to move to an 8-team playoff using the four major bowls as the quarter-finals. All you would need to do is add two games the following weekend (the semi-finals) and a NC game one week later. However, when the 5th BCS game was added, two additional at-large bids came with it. It would be extremely difficult if not impossible now to take back the two extra at-large bids. The non-BCS conferences would howl (and rightfully so) and revenue from the extra game would be lost. So, like with the six automatic bids, the four at-large bids need to be preserved. Some have suggested a 16-team playoff. It is very difficult to have a 16-team playoff that preserves the vested interests of the six major conferences and maintains the prestige and profile of the four major bowls, so my suggestion is to limit the playoff to 10 teams. The six BCS conferences would be allowed to keep their automatic bids to the four major bowls and those bowls would be played on New Year's Day and function as the quarter-finals of the playoff. As with the BCS, a committee would be established to select four at-large teams to round out the ten. The at-large teams would not automatically be given bids to the major bowls but would need to earn their slots in those bowls by winning one of two play-in games a week or so prior to the major bowls. Effectively, the winners of the six major conferences would get a bye in round one of the playoff, while the at-large teams would not. This might seem unfair to the non-BCS conferences, but the current system is already unfair to those conferences and this would at least give the non-BCS schools an on-the-field chance to earn their way into and win the NC game. Moreover, it could be argued that the non-BCS schools generally have softer schedules than the BCS schools and that requiring them to play one extra tough game would help compensate for that. Requiring the at-large BCS teams to play an extra game is fair because, well, they failed to win their conferences. Clearly, a 10-team playoff leaves a lot of teams out, but having too many teams undercuts the primary purpose of the playoff anyway, which is to determine the best team in the country. I cannot remember any year in which a team ranked outside the top five or six (let alone 10) had a legitimate claim as the best team in the country. Keeping the field small also guarantees that the regular season does not lose its importance. Every regular season game will continue to matter just as it does now, because even one loss might cost a team its playoff berth. Of course, one of the big benefits besides a better way to pick a national champion is more TV revenue. A 10-team playoff will have a total of nine games versus the five currently in the BCS, so the playoff would generate substantial additional revenue that could be shared by all the conferences. A couple of issues still remain. First, it is questionable whether even the most ardent fan bases would be willing to travel en mass for multiple playoff games in a single season, and it is possible that turnout would be light for the play-in games. Another question is whether this type of playoff will excessively "devalue" the four major bowl games. As long as the winners of the six major conferences continue to get automatic bids to the major bowl games and those games function as the quarter-finals of the playoffs, the four major bowls will continue to be highly coveted due to the fact that they effectively come with a bye week. I also doubt the major bowls will generate any lesser TV ratings than they do now just because they are the quarter-finals of a playoff. Again, this clearly is not the best playoff system one can come up with starting from scratch, but we are not starting from scratch and the only way we are going to get any playoff system is if the key decision-makers are convinced they are not losing anything. A 10-team playoff that keeps the automatic bids and traditional bowl tie-ins for the six major conferences and keeps four at-large bids (with play-in games) is a better way to select a national champion than the current system. It does not undercut the importance of the regular season or destroy the bowl system. Ultimately, it is a system under which none of the six major conferences or even the lesser conferences will lose anything. All of the conferences should, in fact, come out ahead financially. For these reasons, notwithstanding the many "better" ideas floating around, this is the only one (or something close to it) that I can see all of the key decision-makers eventually accepting.

The thing that cracks me up is this. Every year, people have their gumdrop rainbow fantasies, and they all ever only manage to address that year's specific issues. Last year, we had the Big 12 mess, two power teams in the Big Ten and two more in the SEC, and so nearly every silly little Candyland fantasy dispensed with the autobids and just invited everyone that looked about right. This year, pretty much everyone who's "deserving" has won their conference and there's really only one team per conference. So out the window go the pile of at-larges, and now it's win your conference or go home. Last year was soooooooo unfair to the Texas Techs and Texases of the world......someone please tell me how this one-at-large stuff or win-your-conference-or-go-home stuff would shut up last year's whiners about unfairness?

I see all the elments of my own preferred plan (I've been thinking about this for YEARS - pre-BCS). 1) 8 teams - 4 at-large, 4 conference champs; the 4 auto-bids are for the best conferences over a period of years/prior year (European champions-league like); have Sagarin to the math 2) BCS style determination for the at-larges, regardless of affiliations 3) first round on campus in mid-December (even though I'm a believer home field is a bigger advantage -too big for a fair playoff - in CFB than any other sport) 4) semis on 1/1 in 2 of the 4 major bowls; losers get to play each other in 1/1 games at the other 2 sites - good season reward 5) NC game 2 Saturdays after 1/1 (mostly for logistics planning time) and NO OTHER GAMES MAY BE PLAYED AFTER 1/1 (the games after 1/1 are ruining the traditional beauty that was once 1/1) 6) trim the regular season back to 11; conferences can play 12th for title game While point 1 would be contentious, it certainly opens it up. Another idea would be that the big 6 champs have to finish in the top 12 to qualify. This year, Boise and Iowa would have been hosed, but this is also one of the few years in my memory that a team outside the top 8 would have had a legit shot in a playoff (Iowa). I don't think anyone believes Boise could win 3 straight against elite competition and if they want to get in show, start begging to get into a better conference. (The MWC probably deserves to be discussed - I said DISCUSSED - as a replacement for the Big East and would have an even better case with Boise in the mix.) Since I don't really like round 1 home games, maybe find other bowl sites to serve as round 1 sites. Find me a city that wouldn't want a second, highly significant game in its locale to drive tourism and I'll show you a town that needs a new mayor and city council (People will attend. Don't fool yourselves.) I'd also keep all the other bowls. They're festive and a great reward. We should assemble a handful of us to build out a legit plan, poke holes, write the business plan and start shopping it. This will happen someday. We just need the right first draft and the right audience. "Who's coming with me?"

If you want to have a playoff, you need first to understand why the college presidents, athletic directors, and conference commissioners oppose one now. Here’s a big hint: it has nothing to do with seeding, autobids, and so forth. Any playoff proposal that makes sense will be about economics, not about the seeding mechanism. You may rest assured that if the proposal makes economic sense, selecting and seeding the teams is a second-order problem. Many of the institutions are also concerned about the effect on academics: if an 8-team playoff were in existence, Alabama and Texas would have played 16 games apiece this year. That’s a lot of games for kids who are supposedly students, as well. One contributor to this thread suggested going back to an 11-game season. This is a perfect example of ignoring the economics. While the 8 teams that make the playoff would get that game back, the hundred that do not would simply be deprived of the revenue that a 12th game provides. Fans tend to obsess over the nitty-gritty of how the system would work, but that is not really the issue that is holding up a playoff. What counts is that the universities and conferences do not believe it makes economic or academic sense. If it’s ever going to happen, that is what needs to be addressed.

Haven't read any of the other comments, but a playoff with autobids wouldn't work for football. It would render significant parts of the regular season pointless (like the past 2 years when Florida and Alabama both wrapped up their respective divisions with 2 regular season games left. Also, conference champions aren't guaranteed a spot in the national championship game now, so why would extending that policy (again, the only reasonable way to have a playoff is to not have autobids) to a playoff system? Teams can win their conference and still go to the Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, etc.