Fix College Football: 144 teams, 16 geographic conferences and a 32-team on-field playoff
Ideas index · Outside proposals (3)
Outside proposals are full reform plans from fans, writers and advocacy sites, not from people directly involved in college football. They are kept separate from the insider quotes archive and are summarized from the original pages, which are linked.
- Author
- Anonymous / Fix College Football (fixcollegefootball.com)
- Author type
- advocacy site (anonymous)
- Date
- Undated (No publication date on the page. It refers to the 2024 and 2025 playoffs and the 2025 SEC championship, and uses 2026/2027 in a scheduling example.)
- Original
- https://fixcollegefootball.com
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-01
Summary
An anonymous advocacy page calling for major changes to how Division I football is organized: new conferences, a new season schedule and a new playoff system. The 137 FBS teams plus 7 FCS schools would make 144 teams in 16 geographic nine-team conferences, grouped into 4 regions and 2 leagues (East and West). Each team plays a 12-game regular season. A 32-team playoff begins with the conference championships and moves through regional, league and national title games, with no rankings, selection committees or algorithms. The page says this would let every team compete for the title on the field, shrink travel, reduce transferring and give the whole season meaning.
Key elements
| Number of teams | 144: the current 137 FBS teams plus 7 FCS schools (Montana, Montana State, North Dakota, South Dakota State, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Tennessee Tech). The page says the 7 are public schools that have performed well in FCS play and, except Tennessee Tech, come from states with no FBS team. |
|---|---|
| Conferences | 16 conferences of 9 teams, based entirely on geography (nearby schools, especially in-state, grouped together), each balanced with traditionally strong and smaller schools. The conferences form 4 regions of 4 conferences (North, South, Midwest, Far West), and the regions form 2 leagues: East (North + South) and West (Midwest + Far West). |
| Playoff size | 32 teams, starting with the 16 conference championship games. There are 30 single-elimination games plus the national championship: conference, regional semifinal, regional final, league final and national title. |
| Selection method | No selection process: no rankings, selection committees or algorithms. Conference games alone decide conference standings. Conference champions advance to regional semifinals, where the 4 conferences are seeded 1-4 by their combined record in regional games. |
| Season calendar | 12 consecutive Saturdays: 1 at-large opener, then 3 regional games, then 8 conference games (full round robin, home field alternating by year). The at-large opener is chosen by each school and counts only for 'practice and bragging rights.' Regional games match teams that finished in the same place in their conferences the prior year (e.g., all the #3 teams in a region). The season starts the first Saturday of September (9/2-9/8), with Army-Navy on the Friday night before. The regular season ends the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Conference championships are the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, regional semifinals and finals 12/1-12/14, league championships 12/15-12/21 and the national championship 12/22-12/28. No games in August or January. |
| Bowls | The 4 regional finals and 2 league finals are the 6 major bowls. The East rotates the Orange, Peach and Sugar Bowls; the West rotates the Cotton, Fiesta and Rose Bowls. Regional semifinals and conference championships could also become bowl games (example: the Pop-Tarts Bowl as a conference championship). The national title site is 'to be determined.' |
| Rivalries | Many rivals share a conference (example: Alabama-Auburn). Rivals in the same region may meet in regional games depending on prior-year finish (example: Georgia-Florida), or can schedule each other as the at-large opener. Cross-region rivals (example: USC-Notre Dame) can use the at-large game. |
| Revenue / other | Claimed benefits: much shorter and cheaper travel for students and teams (Georgia Tech example: the farthest conference road trips would be Tuscaloosa or Statesboro, about 3 hours), players spread toward smaller schools for playing time, less transferring, breathing room for coaches early in the season, lower travel costs and higher ticket revenue, more TV viewership, and 'all 144 teams have an equal chance' to win on the field. The plan does not address NIL, revenue sharing or governance. |
Related ideas in the Ideas index
- 9. Playoff expansion to 16, 24 or more teams (32-team playoff)
- 13. Preserve rivalries; geography-based conferences via pooled media rights (geographic conferences that keep rivalries)
- 11. Calendar reform: shorter season, sacred Saturdays (fixed calendar ending Dec 22-28; no August or January games)
- 12. Scheduling: standardize schedules, reward tough non-conference games (standardized 8-3-1 schedule; regional games matched by prior-year finish)
- 7. Transfer limits and portal calendar reform (claims the structure would reduce transferring (not a transfer rule))
Notes
Anonymous advocacy site, not a person involved in college football. Summarized from the live page on 2026-10-01; there is no author name and no publication date. The page's examples of past results (e.g., Indiana's 16-0 season, Alabama's -3 rushing yards in the 2025 SEC championship, 7 of 8 bye teams losing their first playoff game in 2024 and 2025) are the site's claims and have not been verified here. The page lists conferences by region with national-title counts in a graphic that is not reproduced here.