Any time a team wins this a few times, the top group will steal them away just to maintain the imbalance. The P2 would keep taking the top teams from us every so often. Maybe the money could go to the groups and be doled out over a long time, like the NCAA BB tourney, so defector money stays behind.

I think three play-off trees would be problematic for purely emotional reasons, but the concept of two championships has already been established in basketball. Let’s have a 12 team national championship and a 24 team 2nd level playoff.

As you said very correctly, the emotional reasons were very evident. FB board would straight up rather compete against all the P2 advantages, even knowing that we have a very very small margin of error to just be considered for playoff inclusion. And the odds of winning the current version of the playoffs are not good for a non-P2 team. But even with all of that, they had very strong opinions about continuing the sisyphus push of the boulder up the hill. Even knowing that a segmented playoff would give VT a much better chance at equal competition and a path to winning a championship, they viewed that as basically FCS and not worth their time. The psychology is fascinating. The desire to belong among the strongest group makes some willing to accept a lot of suffering in the attempt.

create more or less national television exposure for a football program? Even if you experience great success? Do you think ESPN/FOX/CBS/NBC/whoever would consider the content created by the ACC and Big 12 once officially designated and recognized as "second tier" conferences to be worth more or less than they are currently? I'm just curious on your line of thinking there. Can you name the last D2, D3, or even FCS national champion off the top of your head? Quick, who won the UFL Championship last year?

North Dakota State for FCS, NW Missouri State for DII, and Mount Union for DIII because they watched a NCAA national championship game on TV the year that team won it. However, a very small percentage of college football fans could name the correct year or years in some cases they won a national championship. It is worth noting the NCAA and the various DI school reps noticed a similar perception problem just within DI football. Hence why the decision was made to rename the DI subdivisions from DI-A and DI-AA to DI-FBS and DI-FCS. They decided the old names gave fans the impression DI-FCS football was somehow a "lower tier" of football even though both subdivisions are still technically DI football. Unfortunately, the name change didn't really change people's perception because you will still see a good percentage of people mistakenly refer to DI-FCS football as "DII football" even though that division level already exists.

I recognize that I just jumped into a solution without first laying out the problem that I was solving for. And that’s important because there are so many different perspectives and challenges with college football. So I really appreciate the questions and thought from you and others. Rather than reply here with answers to your questions, I’m going to make an attempt to answer the collective questions and lay out the focus of my line of thinking in a new post once it’s ready.