[I. J. Reilly]

Originally Posted by corbes

Probably other people have thought of this before me but I'm too lazy to check.

If it were up to me, we'd have sixteen pods of four teams arranged more or less in a sensible geographic format. Each team plays the other three teams in their pod every year, and then each pod plays two other pods on a rotating schedule like the NFL. That's 11 games per year.

At the end of the season you have 16 regular season pod-winners. Away we go with the playoffs.

And lastly to keep the small schools happy we'll have a limited system of promotion and relegation. Done and done, no?

I'll even suggest the pods:
(1) North Carolina, N.C. State, South Carolina, Clemson
(2) Georgia, Florida, Florida State, Miami
(3) Tennessee, Louisville, Kentucky, Georgia Tech
(4) Auburn, Alabama, Mississippi, Mississippi State
(5) LSU, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State
(6) Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, TCU
(7) Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri
(8) Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Wisconsin
(9) Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame, Illinois
(10) Penn State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, Ohio State
(11) Connecticut, Syracuse, Boston College, Rutgers
(12) Colorado, BYU, Utah, Boise State
(13) Washington, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State
(14) UCLA, USC, California, Stanford
(15) Virginia, Virginia Tech, Maryland, Wake Forest
(16) Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas State, Iowa State

I know it falls apart in places (like the 16th pod) but really, who cares. Wouldn't this at least be more fun?

But the beauty of college football is how it has always grown organically.

It's like an ancient European city; the streets are way to narrow, the buildings are to small, and the plumbing is horrible but taken as a whole it's beautiful. A new interstate through downtown might clear up the traffic jams, but it will ruin the whole town.