*** The NCAA should sit down with the major bowl organizations and say, "OK fellas, here's how it's going to work and if you don't like it, we will cut you out of this proposal entirely!"
The 10 Division 1 major conference champions (including the MAC, WAC, Conference USA & Mountain West) plus the top 6 non-champion teams from the BaloneyComputerStandings make the playoffs and are seeded as closely as possible into their traditional bowls. The brackets would look like this:
Rose - Big Ten vs. At-large
Orange - Big 12 vs. At-large
Sugar - SEC vs. At-large
Fiesta - Pac 10 vs. At-large
Gator - ACC vs. At-large
Cotton - Big LEast vs. At-large
Holiday - WAC vs. Mountain West
Liberty - Conf. USA vs. MAC
Round 2 could be played the following Thursday & Friday, seeding Round 1 winners according to the pre-bowl BCS numbers: 1 (best BCS rank remaining) vs. 8 (worst BCS rank remaining), 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6 & 4 vs. 5.
Round 3 could be played the following Thursday & Friday with 1 vs. 4 & 2 vs. 3.
And the "National Championship" Game could be played the Saturday before the Super Bowl.
Just look at how the teams would match up this year:
Cotton - Miami vs. Oklahoma
Fiesta - Oregon vs. Texas
Orange - Colorado vs. Stanford
Rose - Illinois vs. Florida
Gator - Maryland vs. Tennessee
Sugar - LSU vs. Nebraska
Holiday - Fresno St. vs. BYU
Liberty - Louisville vs. Toledo
It's similar to what you proposed and I think these matchups (with more playoffs to follow) look a whole lot better than this year's set.
I have one major point of disagreement with your proposal. The Big Ten & Pac 10 shouldn't be forced to have a conference championship game just because the Big XII and SEC were greedy and bastardized their conference "championships."
Actually my plan provides for some conference champ games or none. So the Pac 10 wouldn't be forced to play one, its each conference's choice. However I think a conference playing one should be rewarded, as it is in effect(in one scenario) an additional playoff game. Further, the expansion and consolidation necessary for more conference champ games might lead to the elimination of the weakest major(such as the Big Least). This would force every team to play a tough conference schedule, and also open up two more at-large qualifier slots(and one at-large BCS berth).