It still amazes me that the CFB world went to all the trouble to create a "playoff" and then limited it to four teams when there are *five* major conferences and when one of the key reasons for the playoff was the frustration from the non-major conferences and their home states at being excluded from the BCS. I'd love to say it was stupidity but in fact it was galling, crass hubris.
But your answer is the correct one. The obvious answer is the one everyone has been calling for since the BCS days.
8 team playoff. Slots go to:
- All P5 champions
- Highest ranked G5 team if average Coaches + AP rank is top 15
- Previous year NC if average Coaches + AP rank is top 15
- At-large bids to fill the remaining spots
* Note that the ONLY job of the "committee" would be to fill the at-large slots, return us to proper, competing importances of the coaches' and AP polls
* End arguments by writing into the founding documents that the selection criteria are exactly and only those above. There is no "purpose" to choose the "best team" or the "best season" or to "reward" anything. The goal is merely to include conf champions, the highest ranked G5 and last year's NC under certain conditions, and to include "justifiably championship-quality" teams in at-large bids to fill any remaining slots
* Some might be upset at the "justifiable" language but I'd love to see some national honesty. That's what we have now anyway. Can the blue-bloods and SEC teams be "justified?" then they're in as an arbitrary matter of preference, even with losses or no CCG victory and over other teams with better records or SoS ranks.