Like it or not, playoff expansion is on the table and 12 is the most recent # I've heard being thrown about.
So, since we are playing *what if* and a reduction of games is desired, how's about this...
Today there were 12 division winners that played. And since some seem to think that it was unfair that Georgia was matched against Bama. Let's chunk the conference championships and seed the 12 division winners. Today then would have been the first round and according to the last rankings, these would have been the matchups:
1 UGU vs 21 Houston
2 Mich vs 17 Utah
3 Bama vs 16 Wake
4 Cincy vs 15 Pitt
5 oSu vs 13 Iowa
9 Baylor vs 10 Oregon
Having typed that out and now looking at it, I'm of the mind that that would suck too just like the 5-12 matchups above.
Let's see what 8 teams would look like. We'll keep the CCGs intact and seed the playoffs as follows.
Top 4 conf champions and next 4 highest ranked (subjectivity at play and rematches pretty much unavoidable)
1 Mich vs 8 oSu
2 Bama vs 7 tOSU
3 Cincy vs 6 ND
4 Baylor vs 5 UGA