16 team playoff, 9 game regular season then at most 2 teams have to play 13 games. It would be awesome.
Make the Conference Championship Game winners automatically qualify, and that’s a 10-team playoff right there. Add in two at-large teams, and you have a pool of 7 teams, including the 5 Conference Champions and 2 at-large teams. Seed the teams accordingly, and have the 6 and 7 seeds play each other.
The top two seeds get a First Round bye.
Week of December 14: Play-In Game (6 vs 7)
Week of December 21: First Round (3 vs 6/7, 4 vs 5)
New Years’: National Semifinals (3/6/7 vs 2, 4/5 vs 1)
January 8: National Championship
And I would make it, so that the Top Non-Power Five Conference team, automatically qualifies, if they are ranked in the Top 16, so that a team like UCF can get in.
Interesting concept. That would mean a total of fifteen playoff games played, or playoff bowls.
One issue would be timing, if the bowls were to be around the holidays, the season would have to start in late September - early October.