The playoff to get into the playoff is ridiculously stupid. So you're going to have a team play two pre-playoff games and then go into a game against the number one seed? That's a recipe for a 72-0 blowout and probably a few G5 players getting hurt.

Just make it the highest ranked G5 team gets an auto bid. First round should be at on-campus sites too.

I think that eventually what needs to happen is to come up with a way to have a shorter "regular season", and then some sort of system for flexible games at the end. In other words, suppose you cut the regular season to ten games. Then, the last two games are scheduled after the first ten are completed, in such a way as to match up teams with similar results. At the top you end up with a playoff, but the rest of the teams get games as well, hopefully competitive games.

Thus, say you play a ten game regular season, and then two games that are either mini-playoff games to get into the end of season playoff, or they are just games matched up against competitive foes. Thus, the top four G5 teams would play a two game playoff for the G5 spot. Since there are 7 P5 spots, you could have 28 P5 teams in seven four-team mini-playoffs for the seven spots (much like how the College World Series runs, except that they would be single elimination).

No longer would some committee have the ultimate say about who gets in. Yes, there would be come controversy about which 32 teams got into the playoff, and how they got bracketed, but in the end you have 8 teams in the playoff that earned it on the field. The other teams, meanwhile, play some competitive foe, and hopefully they have entertaining games, too.

In my example, most teams would play only 12 games, ten "regular" games, and two "floating" games. Some would play a 13th game, i.e. a "bowl" game. Eight teams would play in an 8 game playoff. That means 4 teams would play 14 games, and two would play 15. No teams would play 16. I think that's pretty much identical to right now.

I do agree, though, that you can't get to a playoff without either getting to 16 games, or incorporating some sort of flexible scheduling into the regular season. I favor the latter.

DIII is a poor example as they play a 10 game regular season and have a later start to summer camp.

How does shortening the regular season affect already shaky athletic department finances? Home games are a big source of revenue. Perhaps an OSU or Texas has enough cushion in their budgets to bite the bullet and lose that game but does Ohio?

There are 65 P5 teams now. Add a team and have 6 -11 team conferences. Play everyone in your league plus 2 games- no league championship. Now you have 6 league champs. Add the another 6 teams based on some system similar to now so that G-5 has a chance. You can have a 12 team playoff with the top 4 rank teams getting a bye. This would be the same number of games as played now with league championships. (unless one or both of the non-bye teams is in the NCG.) Play the 5-12 group on the first week after the season and now you have an 8 team play-off with the top 4 seeds vs the remaining 4 teams.

Just a plan put together after golf league and several adult beverages. No details provided😀 Just like at the post golf league discussion, if you want to call BS without any substantive input you have to buy a round.