[sphinx]

College football needs to take the final step to a legitimate championship tournament. Being college football, of course, they will mess it up, but a good tournament would have eight teams. Automatic bids would go to the champions of five or six top conferences. No second place teams. Conferences that have split into a divisional structure would have to realign, probably by returning to something close to their ancestral forms. That would leave two or three bids for the best of the rest, including the independents and minor conferences. But again, no runners-up allowed. You win your conference or you're out.

Four teams is too few. The poll rankings would necessarily still play a big role, and differences in quality of schedule would loom too large. Sixteen teams is too many; we would have second and even third place teams from tough conferences and two or three losses playing for the championship. Eight is the right number. There will always be room for a quibble, but all the power conference championships would qualify, and two or three at-large spots would be enough to accommodate the occasional truly outstanding small conference teams.

While we're at it, all conferences should be required to play a complete round robin schedule. No exceptions. And shorten the regular season. Back to the future. College football was much healthier in its earlier iteration, before the evolution of the megaconferences, which are nothing more than television marketing consortiums. Return the conferences to natural, geographically based rivalries of mostly similar institutions. And tell tv to take a hike. Games could be televised, but no tv timeouts to interrupt play. If fans want to watch a commercialfest, watch the NFL.

And restore academic standards, even if it shuts down half the NCAA.

[tomkat]

Your proposal makes a LOT of sense   +1

In other news, I stayed up too late, but seeing SU's upset made it worthwhile   :-)
Must have been near 10K fans/students on the field afterward !

[Jim Noble]

And restore academic standards, even if it shuts down half the NCAA

Half? Ha!

Do that, and you can have a two-team playoff.

[opbuzz]

The NCAA already has a Div 1 Championship. Too bad none of these schools will be recognized by the NCAA as Champion.