I’ve wondered that same thing, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. I with all my heart hope that as soon as it is possible, the NCAA begins a College Football Playoff System. In my opinion, the system we have now, the BCS, is better than before. But ask Miami what they think? The formula changes every year. One year they might have made it, the next they didn’t, and they next they would have. It’s too confusing; hardly anyone but the creators understand it anyway. But what’s hard to understand about watching a game, seeing the final score, and have the winner advancing. Seems simple to me.

Now I know all of the arguments. Costs everyone $$$, takes too many kids away from class too long, gives fewer teams a chance to play postseason, etc, etc, etc. But seriously, couldn’t you play most of these games on weekends in December and the beginning of January? Half of it would be in Christmas break, anyway. I don’t think they’d miss any more class time than the kids who play in the NCAA Basketball Tourney in March.

So here’s the system I’ve created. I’ve put some thought into it, tried to be fair, tried to do this and that to make everyone happy. But in the end, I decided that there is no possible way 100% of the college football fans would be happy. It just ain’t gonna happen. The idea I have cuts the number of Division I-A competitors from 117 in 2001 to 80. From those 80, I made 8 conferences of 10 teams each. The conferences are based mainly on geography, though there is a case or two you may think does not make sense. I also tried to keep the conferences as even as possible, while also attempting to keep together as many rivalries as possible. The 10 members of each conference have been split into 2 divisions of 5 each. These divisions were created mainly on evening out the conference to the best of my ability, while also slightly focusing on geography. That’s why one division may be called the West when a team in the West may not be as far geographically West as another team that’s in the East. Now with 10 conference members, that would give each team 9 conference games. That would leave room for 2 out-of-conference games, if we were to keep the traditional 11-game season (which seems to be more and more untraditional every year). But we’ll keep the 11-game regular season for now.

That season would begin on the first Saturday of September and would be complete by the middle to end of November (around the 20th). On the first Saturday of December, the two divisional champions of each conference would play in what could be considered a conference championship game. What it would actually do though is allow a 16-team playoff, using 2 teams from each conference. Those 8 teams who won the conference championship game would meet in the second round of the playoffs (in a pre-determined matchup; say we already knew the Southeast champ was going against the Midwest champ before they were decided and these matchups could rotate from year to year) on the second Saturday of December. The next round would match the remaining 4 teams in 2 games, beginning on the third Saturday of December. Those two winners would take the next week off, and they would play the next Saturday, which would probably be the last Saturday of December or the first Saturday of January.

I have divided the 80 teams into these 8 conferences. No, they’re not all exactly even. There’s no way to do that. No, they’re not perfect. Yes, the names of the conferences are a little stupid, but forget the names. They were used mainly to keep me from going completely crazy while trying to figure this out. Yes, they’re the best way I could come up with. So check it out, and tell me what you think.