Historically, the problem with college football has always been its subjective methods for determining the year's best team, the "national champion." From the old sportswriters polls to the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) to the current four-team College Football Playoff (CFP), there's too much of the beauty pageant and not enough of settling the issue on the field.
No matter how the system is tweaked, some of the beauty pageant element will remain, and a few deserving teams will feel slighted and unloved. Today's CFP is the best, least subjective system we've ever known. It's a genuine lose-and-go-home tournament. It's major flaw is the four-team format. The nature of football prevents a huge March Madness-style playoff bracket. But four teams is just not enough, and it leads to unsatisfactory beauty pageant decisions -- for two years in a row, undefeated Central Florida didn't make it, nor did back-to-back Big Ten champ Ohio State. (I'm not whining about OSU, just using the Bucks as an example of the subjective weirdness of the CFP selection process.)
Buster's improved CFP expands the playoff field to 8 or even 10 teams. There is space on the calendar to accommodate a tournament of this size. As it stands right now, the four CFP teams are idle for the next four weeks (a wasted month) -- plenty of time for a three-round playoff.
Here's how it would work in 10 team format: The ten teams in the draw would be the conference champions of the ten top conferences. Ya gotta win it to be in it. Let's say the ten best conferences are:
10. Sun Belt -- Troy, Appalachian State, etc.
9. MAC -- Buffalo, N. Illinois, Toledo, OU, etc.
8. Conference USA -- UAB, Florida Atlantic, Marshall, etc.
7. Mountain West -- Boise State, Fresno State, etc.
6. American Athletic Conference -- UCF, Houston, Memphis, Cincinnati, etc.
5. PAC 12 -- Washington, USC, UCLA, etc.
4. Big 12 -- Oklahoma, West Virginia, Texas, etc.
3. ACC -- Clemson, Miami, Virginia Tech, etc.
2. Big Ten -- Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, etc.
1. SEC -- Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Auburn, etc.
The week after the conference championship games, the bottom four have a play-in round where 7 plays 10, and 8 plays 9. Winners advance to the field of 8, and a traditional three rounder -- quarterfinals, semifinals and championship -- ensues.
There is more than enough time to do this and wrap it all up by the first week of January, just as in the current set up. There is opportunity for even more of the "prestige" bowl games to host a playoff game. And there will always be plenty of schools ready to play in all the lesser bowl games -- the Idaho Potato Bowl, the Poulan Weedeater Bowl, the American Standard Toilet Bowl, etc.
There's still an element of beauty pageant. Who determines the ten best conferences? Some committee of geniuses. But Buster's improved CFP adds more teams for a more meaningful playoff, and all those conference champs had to win a meaningful game to get in.
What if there's a big upset in a conference championship game? Suppose Northwestern beat Ohio State last Saturday? In the present system, there's no way the Wildcats would've been picked for the final four. In Buster's CFP, they're in, and why not? They'd be a massive underdog, but they earned it on the field. Play on.
You say conferences like the Sun Belt and the MAC are weak and don't deserve an automatic berth? It's not exactly automatic for the bottom four conferences -- they have to play in to advance to the quarters. Teams from lesser conferences have occasionally notched some big wins over Power 5 teams. And if a conference is truly weak, it had better get stronger or it runs the risk of being dropped from the list of the ten best conferences.
Lastly, you ask, what about independent teams, like the sainted Notre Dame Irish? Well, what about 'em? Buster's CFP is for conference champions, so the independents need to join a major conference or content themselves with the Beef O'Brady's Bowl on a mid-December Thursday. There are just 6 FBS Division I independents: Notre Dame, BYU, UMass, New Mexico State, Liberty, and Army. For the Golden Domers, independence is a financial proposition, but they're in no danger of going broke. Neither are the rest, but honestly, who cares about that? We're talking football. The rule for Buster's CFP is, get in a conference or get out.
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