Quote Originally Posted by Shut Up Brent View Post
Not possible.

The stable number for a college football playoff is 16. There are 11 DivIA conferences, and each conference champion would have a spot. You can't fit 11 teams into 8 spots. You could theoretically have a 12 team playoff, with only a single at-large spot (for the SEC) but the other conferences would push for more at-large spots to get their second teams in.

16 is the number. And it'll be run by the NCAA. And the BCS schools will lose power and leverage. THAT is what I care about. Playoff, no playoff, determine a champion by playing tiddlywinks, I don't give a rat's. What I care about is the control of the money and the power.

The only long-term scenario that I've seen with a playoff and the BCS schools (including VT) maintaining power and control is with the BCS schools breaking away from the NCAA. That is a very low order probability event, IMO. The politics to make that happen would be very, very difficult. It would be a decision for each school to make, and plenty of schools within the BCS fraternity place more emphasis on non-football sports than they do on football. On top of that, a shadow-NCAA run by the SEC would be open to all sorts of problems.

Theoretically, it's possible to create a minor-league professional football structure where the teams are affiliated with, but not officially a part of, universities in the NCAA. For instance, VT would license "Hokies" to the "Blacksburg Hokies" of this minor league sport, players for the Blacksburg Hokies would be eligible for 5 year scholarships redeemable at any time (including after they went to the NFL), the Bburg Hokies would lease Lane Stadium from VT, etc. Making that happen would be even harder than creating a shadow-NCAA.
I'm nitpicking, but there will only be 10 conferences after the MWC/CUSA merger. the NCAA tourney has 8 teams play an extra round, so why not have 4 football teams play an extra round so you can just have 10 conference champs? oh, right, because the first time someone ranked in the top 2 wasn't a conference champ, people would be screaming bloody murder, the same way/reason the NCAA expanded beyond just conference champs in the 70's.