OK. I can play ball with them

by Greg, seemingly ranch, Thursday, May 17, 2012, 08:58 (5137 days ago) @ Ken Fowler

#1 -- conference champ or independent? You're in!
#2 -- conference champ or independent? You're in!
#3 -- conference champ or independent? You're in!
#4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ad nauseam.... same thing. This ensures that only conference champions get in (rather than non-champs like Stanford and Alabama last year) but also makes room for independents.

I got another one.

Take the top two ranked conference champs, no matter where they are ranked in the final BCS polls. Then go to:
#1 -- independent or from a different conference than the two highest-ranked conference champs? You're in!
#2 -- independent or from a different conference than the two highest-ranked conference champs and from the #1 team? You're in!
...and on down the line. This ensures that conference champs get in but also deals with Dylan's issue about an 11-1 conference also-ran that is #3 in the nation while a team from the other division of that conference pulls an upset in the conference championship game and is ranked outside the top 10 at the end of the regular season. The best team in that conference, not its champion, would go in under the above.

Basically, the first rule of all these compromises is there should only be one team from each conference in the playoff. That ensures nationwide appeal and takes power away from a certain family of networks (hi, Troy Smith, how you doin'?). And independents are each treated as their own conference, which encourages indpendence as a natural counterbalance to the known reasons to join a conference or maintain conference membership. Heck, this also encourages teams to spread themselves out among conferences (Boise can get right back out of the BE) instead of consolidating in the old "automatic bid" conferences.