Much better idea than meaningless conference title games

What nobody has explained is - How do you have a conf. champ

In a sixteen-team league, when you only play eight or nine conference games, without divisions and a conference championship game?

The proposal set forth involves automatic bids (which I am against). How do you award an automatic bid to three Big 10 teams who all went 7-2 in the league if they all didn't play each other?

Highest ranked team would win the automatic bid *

But what if, then,

Wisconsin, who plays nobody in the Big 10 West, Goes 11-1 and is ranked 6th, and then UM/OSU/PSU/MSU is 10-2 with a good OOC win and wins over two of the three.

Personally, I’m against playoff expansion

I think the conference championship games are, for the most part, uninteresting. Though they would be more interesting if the two higher ranked teams played in the championship game rather than two division champions.

Additionally, I don’t think a team with two losses should routinely have an opportunity to get hot at the end of the year and win the championship.

Four teams pretty much guarantees the undefeated teams a playoff spot, and should select the ine or two best of the one loss teams. And team with a loss, in my opinion, has lost any claim of a “right” to be in the playoff.

That said, none of which answers your question, I’d award the conference championship to higher ranked of the Wisconsin/UM/Ohio State/etc.

return to smaller conferences *

No chance of hell in that happening

Particularly with grant of rights deals and TV contracts with each conference with different networks in place.

This is why the notion of eliminating the conference title games is a total pipe dream. Plus they are cash cows for the SEC, ACC, and Big 10. There's no way they would give those up. If they go to eight, it will be WITH conference championship games.

And then expand beyond 8 teams?

Or are we just going to kick to the "at-large" curb schools like Utah, TCU, Maryland, Arkansas, Syracuse, etc etc.?

64 power teams

8 conferences of eight teams.

7 non-conference games ... 5 conference games ...

Conference champions play the weekend after thanksgiving.

Seeding based on record and strength of schedule.

Yes, ND would end up in a conference. Under this framework, that's ok.

This is 64 teams. If you divorce football from the all-sports conference, I could see schools like IU or KU walk away from football as a resource drain.

I don't really care about UCF.

Here you go:

Boston Col.
Syracuse
Rutgers
W. Virginia
Virginia
Louisville
Va. Tech
Miami

Maryland
Duke
Wake Forest
N. Carolina
NC St.
Clemson
Ga. Tech
Florida St.

Penn St.
Pitt
Ohio St.
Michigan
Michigan St.
Notre Dame
Indiana
Purdue

Northwestern
Illinois
Wisconsin
Iowa
Missouri
Minnesota
Kansas
Nebraska

Washington
Wash. St.
Oregon St.
Oregon
Utah
BYU
Colorado
Air Force

Cal
Stanford
UCLA
USC
Arizona St.
Texas Tech
TCU
Arizona

S. Carolina
Florida
Georgia
Tennessee
Kentucky
Vanderbilt
Auburn
Alabama

Miss. St.
Mississippi
LSU
Arkansas
Texas A&M
Ok. St.
Oklahoma
Texas

I'd even entertain going to

12 divisions of 8 for 96 "power" teams - 7 Division Games 4 Non-Division and allow 4 "at-large" playoff bids or 5 non-division games and top 4 get a first round bye.

Possible better alternative might be divisions of 9 so you have even number of home and road games.

Do you have your game breakdown backwards?

I'd think it would be 7 conference games and 5 non-conference games.

Yes. Sorry. *

Ok yeah I'm aware of that idea, but that's a bit more than

"return to smaller conferences." I'm just quibbling now, I suppose.