I know this won't be popular and I also know it would never happen but if I were the commissioner of college football and I was tasked with coming up with a playoff format my goal would be to:
1. Keep the regular season important
2. Keep the conference championships important
3. Remove any byes
Thus my rules would be:
1. Each conference gets an auto-bid.
2. Conferences must have at least 10 schools and play a conference championship game (creates a defacto play-in game for some teams)
3. Total number of playoff spots would be the next even number that is rounded up from the number of auto-bids. So this year it is 9 auto-bids and 7 at-large
4. First two rounds are at campus sites of higher seeds.
2025 auto-bids: Tulane, James Madison, Indiana, Georgia, Texas Tech, Duke, Kennesaw State, Boise State, Western Michigan
2025 at-large: Ohio State, Oregon, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Miami
I don't care if Indiana would pound the piss out of Kennesaw State and if Ohio State would whip Western Michigan. I like giving the smaller schools a seat at the table. March Madness isn't hurt by having the 16-seeds offered up as a sacrificial lamb.