[MicroBob]

Yeah, something like this.
Just let the conference winners in even from the mid-majors. It works for college hoops just fine. Even though a 16 seed has never beaten a 1 seed there have still been some exciting games. You can still keep the conference championships to determine who represents each conference.

You will have 5 at-larges plus champs of the 11 conferences:
ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, C-USA, MAC, MWC, Pac 10, SEC, Sun Belt, WAC


Other elgibile teams can still go to smaller bowl games. I don't think this set-up makes it any less prestigious for 6th place Big 10 or 4th place CUSA or 3rd place MAC to go play at the Fort Worth Bowl or Emerald Bowl or Pointsettia Bowl or GMAC Bowl, etc.

These smaller bowls don't exactly need to be protected in the first place imo. Many of them are relatively new and only came on the scene because they are able to take advantage of the system and get a TV contract, etc.
hell, most people joke about the sillyness and pointlessness of some of these smaller bowl games.


It wasn't too long ago, less than 10 years, that a 10-1 Miami, Ohio team that beat a #11 ranked UNC did not get an invite to any bowl simply because there weren't enough bowls around and they just weren't a big enough attraction.
Only one MAC team went to a bowl and that year Marshall with Pennington and Moss went 11-0.
Meanwhile, 6-5 UNC went to the Las Vegas Bowl that year.

I think there were 16 or 17 bowl games 10 yrs ago perhaps...as opposed to 32 or 33 now I think.

Now you have 3 bowl games guaranteed for the MAC and 5 bowl games for the freaking CUSA. This is great for those conferences. They get revenue and get on TV, etc etc.
But these are bowl games that are NOT steeped in tradition or in dying need of being preserved.
Even the small schools that get their chance to go to bowls no longer get THAT excited about it.
And again, I'm not even sure that a playoff system would need to detract from the pagentry and excitement that is the Motor City Bowl one little bit.

I mean, it's nice for Troy to go to a bowl, but I think they are more excited about competing with an SEC team in the regular season than they are about taking on a Northern Illinois in the Emerald Bowl like they did a couple yrs ago.


But think of the excitement for a Central Michigan or Hawaii or BYU or UCF if we set it up so that they get their shot at LSU or WV or whoever.
Yeah, most of the time they'll get killed. But I honestly don't see why that's such a horrible thing when we have the exact same thing in the college hoops tourney every year.