Four teams is just a transitional state from the BCS.
Some are advocating a 16 team playoff, but that would be ridiculous. Four more games after playing 12 or 13 in order to see who's champ? There would be too many cries regarding time lost to schooling and increased chances of injury.
Conference play should be based on a full round robin. Any “conference” that has split into two divisions, to my mind, is no longer really a conference. The divisions are the real conferences, and the larger entity is just a television marketing gimmick.
Eight teams is the right number for a playoff, but not because of academic or injury considerations. I’m old enough to remember when those were the reasons given by the colleges for opposing a playoff back in the ancient days of a ten game season. I took it seriously then. there is no credibility to it now.
That said, any credible playoff needs to include all major conference champions to avoid endless strength of schedule arguments. It needs to include all unbeaten teams. And it needs to have room for the occasional really outstanding team from a minor conference; otherwise the lower half or more of D1 will be shut out in perpetuity and might as well just leave. On the other hand, 16 teams is too many. There would be too many two and even three loss teams, and second and third place teams from the major conferences.
I agree that 16 teams is too many. But not for your reasoning.
If state champion high school teams can end up with 16 games (and they do in PA), then a handful of college teams could play that many games.
Bottom line is that we need to work with 4 teams here for a while to see how it goes.
People used to argue about who was #1. Then we got the BCS.
And people agrued about who should be #2.
Now, we can argue about who is #4.
Having 4 super conferences would be the logical way to do it, with conference championships being de facto quarterfinals.
Can’t we enjoy the fact right now that we don’t have Oregon playing OSU in the Roase Bowl while FSU plays someone else in the Sugar Bowl?
At least we get an actual bona fide tournament this year.