11 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

IMO, the only thing conference champions should be guaranteed is a spot in the playoff. 

Let seeding determines who gets a home game and who gets a bye. 

Then get rid of the conference championship games.  No reason to play them if there is no reward.

14 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

Let's get the 12 teams. I'd prefer a computer ranking to do that. 

Once we have the 12 teams seeded "in order," the top four seeds get a bye, and should get to play in a bowl game that is closest geographically to them based on seeding. #1 gets the lowest seeded winner from Round 1, so on and so forth. 

Teams 5-8 host a playoff game in the first round. 

Teams 9-12 go to one of the the previous mentioned 4 teams for the First round. 

Using this model and the AP Poll as an example, this year we would have had:

Oregon with a bye to the Rose Bowl

Georgia with a bye to the Peach Bowl

Notre Dame with a bye to the Sugar Bowl

Texas with a bye to the Fiesta Bowl

Penn State hosing Clemson

Ohio State hosting SMU

Tennessee hosting Arizona State

Boise State hosting Indiana

3 minutes ago, No Hiding Here....BC 21 said:

Then get rid of the conference championship games.  No reason to play them if there is no reward.

The reward is a bid to the playoff. 

18 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

The reward is a bid to the playoff. 

Other than Iowa State, the other 7 conference championship game participants got in.

Not really much of a reward

1 minute ago, No Hiding Here....BC 21 said:

Other than Iowa State, the other 7 conference championship game participants got in.

Not really much of a reward

I have no preference on whether the conference championship games are played or not. I couldn't care less. Just stating that there is a benefit as things currently stand.

Rumors are coming out that there will be tweaks to the system, which is good.

A big obstacle with all this is the conference imbalances. Whether it be conference size, conference strength, or scheduling inequalities, coming up with a foolproof solution is next to impossible.

6 hours ago, No Hiding Here....BC 21 said:

Other than Iowa State, the other 7 conference championship game participants got in.

Not really much of a reward

It is very much a reward to get an automatic bid to the playoffs. Before you ever play a game in that season, you know the one way to guarantee you play in the playoffs is to win your conference championship. If you don’t win your conference championship, then you leave yourself open to miss the playoffs based off of human opinion, computers, or just whatever is used to determine the at large teams. 
 

So the reward is knowing exactly what you have to do before the season even starts to guarantee yourself a playoff spot.