Solution to all the National Championship debate

I do not like that a non-conference champion is included in the 4 teams. Granted, they may be one of the best teams in the country, but if you cannot win your division or conference, you should not be included.

So, rather than just complaining, come up with a logical solution. Here is mine.

8 Conferences, 12 teams each. That is 96 teams. If you are not in a conference, you are out of consideration. I will get to how to make up the conferences in a bit.

So, to get to the National Championship, you have to win your conference. Period. No exceptions, no excuses. Puts Conference play on the top in way of importance. Out of conference play can still be anywhere or anyone to get ready for conference play. 3 weeks will be all we need - 2 sided tournament of 4 teams each.

Week 1, 4 games. Week 2, 2 games, Week 3, Championship game.

Now, conference affiliation. Make it regional. No matter the size of the schools. Remember, 12 teams per conference. As an example - all are to be in College Bowl Series now:

Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Houston, Texas State, UTSA, TCU, Baylor, SMU, UTEP, North Texas, Rice.

North 6 would be Baylor, N. Texas, TCU, SMU, Tech, UTSA
South 6 would be UT, A&M, UH, Tx State, Rice, UTSA

conference championship to be played in Jerry’s World.

Another example in the SEC/AAC/Conf USA world
LSU, La Tech, UL-Lafayette, Ole Miss, Miss State, Southern Miss, Arkansas, Ark State, Tulsa, Okie State, OU.

Again, North/ South

North: Arkansas, Arkansas State, Tulsa, OU, Okie State, La Tech
South: LSU, UL- Lafayette, Tulane, Ole Miss, Miss State, S. Miss

Solves travel expenses, mixes big and small schools, puts local rivalries back in place

this can also be used for all other sports, not just football. Baseball, Basketball, Softball. Pretty much anything.

16 teams per conference and you aren’t leaving anyone out.

8 team playoff, and don’t mess with it. May have to take the Conference Championship game off if they don’t want to increased the games played by college students.

Or go to 3 non-conference games instead of 4. I think the conference championship game is more important than a showdown with Lamar or Texas State.

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Like it. Does not affect anything else.

The only way the playoffs expand is if the P5 conferences think it benefits them financially. In other words, no forced realignment and no forced conference championships.

The simplest is to have an 8 team playoff format similar to the BCS bowl selection process. The conference champion of the P5 conferences gets in regardless of ranking.

For the final 3 spots they would probably only agree to the top 3 ranked non conference champs getting in but I think there is room for the same type of thing that was for the non-AQ conferences before. The highest ranked G5 conference champ gets a seed if it is ranked in the top 12 or if it is ranked higher than any of the P5 champs.

It would not be a hard to justify to P5 schools that it is a much harder road for a G5 school to be ranked 12th than for a P5 school to be ranked 8th or that a G5 conference champ ranked higher than a P5 conference champ definitely deserves a shot.

Right. The networks only want the same 10-20 teams in the conversation so it can be NFL lite. They are going to have to be forced. The networks don’t care AT ALL about what the sport really is or what it’s supposed to be. Meanwhile the NCAA stands behind the networks grinning.

There must be an ‘on the field’ path for every single school regardless of conference or its just more of the same.

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There are 10 conferences and 4 independents. Your comment seems to imply that the conference champion of the 10th strongest conference, regardless of overall record and OOC schedule, must be in the playoffs or we might as well stay at 4 teams. It’s thoughts like that, is why it took so long to get from the BCS to the 4 team playoff.

Push hard enough and the P5 just becomes it’s own division and the rest become a subdivision allowing those teams zero chance at an FBS title.

I like the 8 conference, 10 team per conference idea, 4 wild cards. Every conference has a round robin, champs go to playoff. 3 out of conference games. Top 4 seeds get a bye.

If you want to include (almost) everyone in D1, 12 conferences, 10 teams per, 4 wild cards.

I say twelve 10 team conferences, 3 non conference games and 9 conference games…that way you play everyone in the conference once. ONLY conference champions to the playoff. Make the conferences mostly regional. Also just to add a little spice to everything, have a soccer style relegation for the bottom two teams of every conference and bring up the best two teams from the lower divisions. Boom! Everyone wins.

Ideally I’d prefer a 16 team playoff, all conf winners + 6 at large with home games for the higher seeds until the championship as outlined in the book Death to the BCS.

However, I’d settle for an 8 team which would make a lot of sense also. Though instead of regular ‘auto bids’ for the P5’s they should do four autobids to the highest ranked conference champions of the P5s, one auto-bid for highest ranked conf champion of G5 then three at larges. You know, just to stick it to the B12 some more.

First, remove the bowls. Playoff games should be home field until the final, no matter how many teams involved. Teams should decline bowl invites from any bowl that requires the school to buy tickets-that’s not an invitation, it’s soliciting a rental in a place you’d never go otherwise.

Second, take back the ability for conferences to negotiate their own media deals. This is a matter of state universities freezing out other state universities just because of their football team’s TV value, and state legislatures and voters should not accept it. Let the FBS work a deal as a unit, like the NFL does, and let everyone have access to revenue. Performance based is fine, but year one has to be equal, as the new baseline for future adjustment.

Third, every conference champion gets an auto bid. It works in every other sport and every other level of football. If Michigan doesn’t like staying home while Western Michigan gets to play, you’ll see realignment happen real quick. The conferences will naturally regionalize and balance out. There should be a twelve team tournament, with top four rewarded with a first round bye. There will quickly be twelve conferences of ten or eleven teams, so everything is round robin, and every game matters.

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This probably can’t happen. NCAA vs University of Oklahoma Board of Regents case that went to the Supreme Court allowed schools to set their own TV deals. This opened the Pandora’s Box that has changed the game into what it is now.

Start lobbying Trump now. He has a Supreme Court seat to fill. Sounds like a great question for a candidate.

More seriously though, you’re spot on about Pandora’s box. I wonder whether the SWC would’ve broken up of media rights weren’t such an important factor. As we saw again with the latest bug 12 circus, nobody wants a Texas heavy conference except Texans. Who would care if the conference wasn’t trying to consider national tv ratings?