Teams will want to keep rivalry games. The first 6 games establish a seeding for the initial 128 team bracket. Beyond that you would have a middle and lower bracket to begin filling with one and two loss teams respectively. Winner of top bracket plays winner of the champions in the lower brackets. There are challenges. Worst team might only play 9 games. There could be games added for eliminated teams. Who gets home games? Could get very skewed. One team in the championship will have zero losses. Is it win or go home at that point? Football isn't known for a series. It would be a complicated mess since it isn't a strict single elimination bracket.

We have geographically defined conferences of around 9-10 teams each. Each team plays every other team in their conference and 3-4 OOC games. No conference championship games; conference champions are defined by conference record with a H2H tiebreaker. After everyone plays their 12 game schedule, we let bowls invite whichever teams they'd like to invite, and then those teams can decide which bowl to accept. Bowl champions get big, shiny trophies. After all those bowl games are decided, and bowl champions crowned, we can all discuss and argue about who was the best team that year. It's a weird idea, but I think people would like it.

and schools couldn't afford large NIL budgets, bloated and expensive coaching staffs, or even waterfalls and putt putt courses for players.

I was a big fan of the 4 team playoff at the time. I wish it would have never expanded beyond that.

"NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP" was just a general idea that people talked and argued about, and not an actual thing. Everything just meant a lot more. There was no "opting out" of anything, let alone a bowl game. The Madison Avenue people have really screwed it all up.

the top 8 bye's and guaranteed home game, and let the other 16 play into it. The portal and players being paid is what changed things. It's just coincidence that the expanded playoff format changed around the same time.

with expanding to a 32-team field like DII or DIII is currently now. I think 1 may even be 40 or 48 (if my memory is correct). 32 always seemed like the perfect number to me because every conference could receive an automatic bid that wants one and every team in the Top 25 should be able to make the field.

basketball will never win it all, they will still have to be beat on the court. Probable the same if football expands to that level, but the National champion will have to win it on the field, not in the polls. The way it should be.

this past weekend 29-28. The Red Birds are the only unseeded team left in the field this year, so you may get an example of an unseeded team winning the NCAA DI Playoffs in football. I suspect if I went through all the playoffs, then I probably would find a year where an unseeded team won it all. Heck FAMU may have even been unseeded when it won the first one in 1978.