If College Football started “all teams” in late August, you could more than make up for not having Conference Championship games money wise, that have a negative impact on at least 50% of the teams for the playoff. (Even the winners lose players to injuries in these almost no reason games while ND smartly sits home heals and scouts their next opponent). Want to give the players a Conference Championship ring, in this participation trophy society, you get one by being the highest ranked team, once the playoff is over. Have a banquet with pizza, peanuts and a big sheet cake declaring you are Conference Champions, and hand out rings and hang a banner. Old school style! 🤣 Do Conference Rivalry games on Thanksgiving weekend. Remember the big OOC Rivalry games have already been played, and by the way this will make for a huge amount of conversations in the off season. Imagine the talk in the off season around these OOC Rivalry games : Oklahoma Nebraska Penn State Pitt Virginia Tech Tennessee Notre Dame USC Florida Florida State Georgia Georgia Tech Virginia Maryland Syracuse Rutgers BC UConn Oregon Oregon State Washington Washington State Now you just get a few days to talk about them, this would be the entire offseason of Rivalry Talk with schools that are usually close by. It would bring back some of the lost rivalries and create some new natural rivalries. Plenty of time to play them before the NFL starts too. On Conference Rivalry games on Thanksgiving weekend: Miami Florida State Clemson Georgia Tech Cal Stanford SMU Louisville (going to be a handful of new ones) UNC NCSU Virginia Tech Virginia Duke Wake etc Now take the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and play Army Navy by itself. Every playoff team gets a bye to heal up that weekend. Then start with 16 (maybe eventually 24) teams the next week with everyone in the playoff playing , the top 8 ranked teams get a home game. If it’s just 16, the quarterfinals are on News Years Eve and Day. A week later the semifinals and a week later Finals (possibly MLK weekend) so many people are off Monday, and that helps ratings, not to mention the working stiff. By the way, the upcoming Super Bowl in 27 is on Presidents Day weekend. Again better ratings and better for the working stiff. PS Don’t get to caught up in the matchups I listed, those can be changed. ** Edited by Stech at 2/22/2026, 9:58:01 AM