You only need an 8 man tourney. Take the 6 major conferences and two wildcards. Then you will have a true Champion.
Congrats to OSU
My idea is create Four Super Conferences, basically absorb the Big 12, so you have the: SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Pac 12, each with 20+ teams divided into 3 or 4 divisions.
From there it’s real easy to devise a playoff structure that would allow for Conference Semi-Finals, and a Conference Championship Game, with the winners of each Conference in the National Final Four. So there’s your 16-team playoff right there.
Your assuming that only the 6 majors have any good football. I think every conference needs represented - it’s only 2 more weeks of football to make 16 - they have dead time they can use in Dec so it wouldn’t be difficult.