In recent years of college football, there have been many new developments that have revolutionized the sport while causing confusion and upset among fans, media, and coaches alike.
There are many reasons for this, as the rules and structure of the sport seemingly change every season. Complaints about the schedule, playoff size and automatic bids have dominated the headlines in recent years, all against the backdrop of the NIL, the transfer portal and conference realignment.
Advertisement
College football’s biggest problem seems to be simply the lack of standardization. College football is now too much for the NCAA to handle and as such should be treated differently than any other sport. This applies to how your money is managed through media rights and revenue sharing, as well as how your champion is crowned.
The NFL seems to have control and football players are unique when it comes to fame and fortune at the college level. So why not try to copy the professional model and apply it on a much larger scale? Well, that’s what we’ll try to do today with a three-step plan to standardize college football while looking to maximize entertainment.
Step 1: Conference Realignment
If you’re a fan of traditionalism in college football, you’ll probably be drawn to the conference alignment that has existed for much of the 21st century. They made sense geographically, had rich histories, and preserved the rivalries that make college football so great. In 2026, conferences will feature schools from coast to coast and will even have different numbers of teams.
Advertisement
So let’s try to standardize things a bit by making conferences that are (at least to some extent) balanced in terms of competitiveness, geographically sound, and all have the same number of schools. Note that this structure only takes football into account, but could make sense for other sports, especially travel.
Here’s a look at how a new Power 5 could work:
This structure includes the 68 teams currently in the Power 4 conferences plus 12 additional schools, giving us a total of 80 that can be divided into five conferences with 16 teams each. It keeps geography at the forefront for travel purposes, while also mixing in some of the long-standing relationships between schools.
Advertisement
Our Pacific Coast Conference looks like the old PAC-12 with the addition of BYU, Boise State, UNLV and San Diego State. Our Southwest conference is like the modern Big 12, with some shades of the old Big Eight and the old Southwest Conference that existed until 1996. Our new Midwest conference looks a lot like the Big Ten we all know and love with the addition of Cincinnati, Iowa State, Louisville, Pittsburgh and West Virginia.
Jumping to the southeast, we have roughly the modern SEC with the addition of some smaller schools in the region that have routinely punched above their weight in the Group of 5, such as Appalachian State, Liberty, Tulane, UCF and USF. Finally, welcome to the conference play, Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish join the reworked ACC (kicking and screaming), along with James Madison, Maryland and Rutgers.
We’ll talk more about the playoffs in a moment, but these would be the 80 teams eligible to compete for a championship at the FBS level. As for our “Group of 5” schools, they would drop down to the FCS level to compete for their own national title. Let’s face it, those teams have almost zero chance of winning a national title as things stand today. They hardly play the same sport, so allowing them to compete with smaller schools in their own playoffs gives them a chance to win on a national level.
However, we will keep our newly created FCS involved. Let’s associate the Pacific Coast with the Mountain West, the Southwest with the Sun Belt, the Midwest with the MAC, the Southeast with C-USA, and the ACC with the American. They can schedule non-conference matches against each other and participate in a relegation and promotion system used by European soccer leagues. This would allow small schools a path to compete with big schools, should they maintain good performance over the course of a few seasons.
Advertisement
Our biggest hurdle here (and it’s a big one) would be media rights for each conference, but the best possible solution would be deals negotiated by a larger entity (like the NCAA or the College Football Playoff Committee), looking to broadcast FBS-wide rather than on a conference-by-conference basis. And with so many games and so many media suitors like ESPN, FOX, NBC, Turner and Amazon and Netflix entering the game, there’s room for everyone to fill.
Step 2: Standardize Schedule Robustness
Weak non-conference schedules will be a thing of the past with our new standardized schedules, much like those that exist in the NFL. To start, let’s keep the regular season at 12 games, but start a week early (where Week 0 currently is) to allow two weeks of rest for each team.
Next, we will have each team play eight conference games, two non-conference games against other Power 5 teams, and two non-conference games against Group of 5 teams. This should ensure that complaints about “weak” schedules are kept to a minimum come playoff time, as each Power 5 school will play 10 games against other Power 5 schools.
Advertisement
Plus, it provides more opportunities for matchups between big programs that don’t cross paths as often. How nice has it been to watch Texas in the Big House, Ohio State in Notre Dame, Utah in the Swamp and Auburn in the Penn State White Out over the past few years? More of these high-profile matchups should only bring more eyes and more money to the sport.
How do we determine who plays who? We will use the NFL system to compare opponents that finished with similar records during the previous season.
For example, the Detroit Lions finished in fourth place in the NFC North in 2025, so they play fourth-place teams in the AFC South (Titans), NFC East (Giants), and NFC West (Cardinals) in 2026. Using Michigan as an example at the college level, the Wolverines finished tied for the third-best record among our Midwest teams in 2025, so they would play two games against teams that finished similarly, such as Vanderbilt, Houston, Miami and Utah in 2026, with one game at home and the other on the road.
These interconference matchups, as well as conference matchups, can be completely random year to year. Additionally, non-conference games can be placed randomly on the schedule to add some intrigue. The only exception to this would be rivalry games, which can be placed in their traditional spots on the schedule and count toward a team’s non-conference matchups, such as Notre Dame and Stanford or Georgia and Georgia Tech.
Advertisement
And while we’re at it, broadcast the schedule live on television for everyone to see during the spring and make a big show like the NFL schedule release or the NBA Draft lottery for accountability and entertainment purposes.
Below is an example of what a schedule might look like for a school from each conference (Washington, Oklahoma, Michigan, Tennessee and Notre Dame) under our stipulations with non-conference matchups highlighted:
Step 3: Postseason Play
We’ve arrived at everyone’s favorite topic: determining who should and shouldn’t make the College Football Playoffs. Breathe deeply everyone.
Advertisement
Based on the structure we’ve created so far with more balanced conferences and a standardized schedule, it actually makes sense that there will be more parity and viable playoff contenders by the end of the year. And with no guaranteed spots for conference champions (more on that in a minute), we’ll actually expand the playoffs to 16 teams, much like what will happen in the next few years. When you consider that the NFL effectively uses a 14-team playoff for a 32-team league, a 16-team playoff for an 80-team FBS doesn’t seem so bad.
With the playoffs so big, there is no longer a need for conference championship games, as they are unlikely to affect who gets in and who gets left out. We will still give automatic bids, but we will keep them modest with the top two teams in each conference entering the playoffs, and like the NFL, we will base this on overall record rather than conference record to ensure the best teams with the best resumes get in. The remaining six spots can be at-large bids determined by the committee, while the same committee will determine the overall playoff seeding much like it is done for the NCAA basketball tournament.
We will keep the rest of the structure similar to today, with the first round being on-campus games, while the quarterfinals and semifinals will be the New Year’s Six Bowls. Here’s what this would have looked like in 2025 with rankings based on the final AP Poll:
The final detail here solves one of the biggest problems pointed out by coaches across the country. We will advance the playoffs to begin exactly two weeks after the regular season ends and each round will be spaced exactly one week apart. According to the dates of the 2026 season, it coincides with the National Championship that will be played on January 2, but even if it has to be delayed a few days to ensure it happens on a Saturday (or even a Friday), it is much better than playing on a Monday at the end of January.
Advertisement
This ensures that the end of the season is closer to the start of the winter semester for many schools, allowing for a smoother transfer portal period where all teams can participate equally and players (and coaches, for that matter) don’t have to leave their teams in the middle of the playoffs. Additionally, it prevents fan interest from fading too much over the course of a long break and ensures that the offseason is longer and more refreshing for players.
Where does it leave us?
While our proposal has its pitfalls, it addresses some of the concerns fans have with the sport, while also steering it toward a standardized NFL-like model that can partially address competitive balance while providing more excitement during the regular season. The other side of the coin, which would provide even more standardization, would be the important NIL and transfer portal reforms that many have called for, and which justify their own deepening in due course.
What do you think of this proposal? Let us know in the comments below.