Ironically enough, as they expand the playoffs, they're closing the circle and approaching a return to the format they used pre-BCS.
300-some odd teams in D1.
What they could do, is have a 256 team bracket starting in week 4.
Play the first 2 or 3 games of the season for seeding, then have:
Week 4: Round of 256
Week 5: Round of 128
Week 6: Round of 64
Week 7: Round of 32
Week 8: Round of 16
Week 9: Round of 8
Week 10: Round of 4
Week 11: Round of 2
Week 12: Championship
Make it a double elimination tournament.
All teams eliminated from the tournament shift immediately to conference play, which the universities can work out on their own accord before the season through a home/away format what weeks their stadiums are open/they're willing to travel, making "on the fly" conference scheduling easier.
To retain the drama of "rankings" that the comittees like so much, just have "re-seeding" after every round, where basically coaches and the AP can set the bracket up to produce the most drama.
In the end, you'll have a college champ that has at the very most 1 loss, but 50% of the time will be undefeated, and will have beaten all competitors.
All programs successful enough to basically beat up on 2-3 trash opponents will find themselves playing highly visible and marketable playoff games, which replace regular season games against unranked, no-name schools.
Even the loser's bracket would do huge numbers.
Now that universities can pay kids directly AND they can get sponsorship cash, the illusion of them being "student" athletes is completely gone, so why continue under the illusion that not knowing whether they're flying to gainsville or tuscaloosca next weekend is going to impact their psy101 midterms.
And having a comittee maintain rankings/seedings will let universities have a pretty good grasp on travel logistics based on where they'll likely end up if they win/lose.
