Thinking Out Loud

So I've been giving some thought to the whole bowl vs playoff debate surrounding major college football.  Many would say a true championship playoff should include the best team from each conference.  This gives us 11 teams, not ideal for a playoff bracket.  You could add the best independent team, for 12 teams, but should we be rewarding non-conformers?  So you could add the 1 best ranked team, or even 5, to get to 12 or 16, but I've come up with a better solution.

In order to host a conference championship, a conference must be comprised of 12 or more teams.  In the current alignment of 11 conferences, 5 have championships, 6 do not.  Simply stated, the 5 conferences with a championship would send their crowned champion to the national championship bracket.  The other 6 conferences would have to play each other for the remaining 3 spots.

Using my ranking system, those 6 teams would be placed in a separate regional bracket to be played the same weekend of the conference championships at neutral locations.  The highest ranked team plays the lowest ranked team and inward from there like a normal bracket.  The winners of these 3 games get placed into the national championship bracket.

The national bracket is then seeded highest ranked versus lowest ranked and inward from there.  The first round of 4 games could be played on campus of the higher seed (or nearest pro stadium for additional seating) the week (maybe 2) after conference/regional championships.  The second round of 2 games would be played at neutral sites, possible traditional bowl locations, after/on January 1.  The championship game would be played the week after the second round at another neutral site, again, possibly a traditional bowl location.

There you have it.  3 weeks to determine your national champion.  You are only looking at a potential of 2 additional games for those schools advancing to the national championship.  3 if that school is from a non-conference championship conference.  Because of this, maybe the NCAA could go back to a mandated 11 game schedule.  This would mean a max of 12 games before national championship bracket starts and a max of 15 games for the 2 teams facing each other at the end of the season.  Right now the max gams is 14 if the eventual national champion comes from a conference championship conference.  Extending the season by 1-2 games should be nothing for players seeking NFL careers.  And if the NCAA, conferences and teams schedule games better and keep by weeks to a minimum, you could possibly have a week or 2 between conference/regional championship games and round 1 of national championship playoff.