College football has lost its way. Here's how to fix the CFP system

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I believe I’ve found a way to fix college football’s directionless path into the future.

The conference championship games meant very little this year.

A majority of the bowls also meant very little.

A food fight broke out when Notre Dame was not given one of the 12 College Football Playoff spots.

A whole other mess would have happened had Notre Dame gotten in and Miami didn’t, despite the Hurricanes winning their head-to-head meeting.

To say things were a mess is an understatement.

However, I’ve never been one to complain without offering a solution.

So, here goes:

Step 1 in fixing the CFP process

Right now, the FBS has 136 teams. We need to get that number to 128.

Why 128? If you divide it by 16, you get 8.

My solution is to have eight, 16-team conferences. (They will be revealed below.)

The top two teams from each conference play a conference championship, which is also a bowl game and the first game of the 16-team CFP bracket.

Once you have eight conference champions set for the second round, seeding is done based on CFP rankings.

Which 8 teams are you kicking out?

Many years ago, our business had to undergo a downsizing, and it was tough.

Everyone is important and no one did anything to lose their job.

Yet, the downsizing had to happen, so here’s how it was done in one department that had four people of equal talent and ability: They got rid of the person most recently hired.

We’d have to do that here.

The eight most recent teams to join the FBS are Missouri State (2025), Delaware (2025), Kennesaw State (2024), Sam Houston State (2023), Jacksonville State (2023), James Madison (2022), Liberty (2018) and Coastal Carolina (2017).

They would be sent back down to the minors, so to speak.

Fear not, though, to those eight schools. After the first year of my system, the worst team in each conference gets relegated to FCS, and these eight teams move up.

Each team's name would be placed on a pingpong ball numbered 1-8, and each conference assigned a number, and as each ball comes up, the team with the corresponding number gets placed in that conference.

This would also ensure each conference would see different competition entering every year.

How do I split the 128 teams into 16 divisions?

I first made a spreadsheet of all 128 teams.

I took the two dozen-plus “Blue Blood” programs and split them to start.

Some rivalries, I purposely kept apart, placing them in different divisions on purpose. For example, would you rather see Ohio State and Michigan play in the first round every year as division powers, or would you rather see them play later in the playoffs?

I chose the latter in many cases, and thus they would be in different conferences.

I kept some familiar foes together, because, let's face it, a team like Florida has many rivals.

I still have Florida and Georgia in the same "conference" as you'll see below, but with only two other current SEC teams (Tennessee and Kentucky).

And Florida State would be in a conference with Miami, but you'll also notice schools currently in the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 mixed in.

I tried to balance each division with an equal number of traditional powers. I did the same with middling and upstart programs.

By mixing these teams together, you can potentially uplift some teams, or at least help their coffers by letting them play bigger programs.

Either way, if big schools are going to play small schools — for instance Florida State destroying Kent State — they may as well mean something as conference games.

How would division play work?

Each division has 16 teams. But we’re not playing a round-robin, 15-game season.

I would make the regular season 11 games and the four teams you don’t play this year, you play next year. And so on and so forth.

This way, you would get to play teams at least every three years.

Some years, a schedule might be harder, some easier.

Of course, you could also have discussions as to a permanent opponent or two, but that could create an advantage for some schools over others.

What about the other bowls?

With a 16-team tournament, you need 15 bowl games.

The semifinals and championship games would rotate between six bowls: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Peach and Cotton.

The other nine bowls would need to be determined. I’ll let the high-priced CFP leaders figure those out.

In 2025-26, there were 36 traditional bowl games and 11 College Football Playoff matchups. At a total of 47, that leaves 32 bowl games after the tournament, each bowl plucking teams in similar fashion as they do now.

An innovative trophy idea

After each CFP game this year, the winning team has received a trophy.

With a 16-team tournament, that means the champion could wind up with four trophies.

For each round, I would have the trophies get bigger, and they combine to create an even bigger trophy after each round.

At the end, the championship trophy would plug into the other three to form one giant, amazing-looking trophy.

Without further ado, here are my 8 conferences:

As mentioned earlier, I did my best to split up power programs to create parity. I also took geography into consideration, but in some cases, it's not perfect. It looks much better in a spreadsheet, but those don't always translate well for a phone or other digital device (or newspaper, for that matter).

I'm not married to these, but they made sense to me. It's certainly negotiable.

But here's what I propose:

Conference 1

• Georgia
• Florida
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• UCF
• Virginia Tech
• Duke
• NC State
• North Carolina
• Charlotte
• Louisiana
• Georgia Southern
• East Carolina
• UMass
• Western Kentucky
• Middle Tennessee

Conference 2

• Oklahoma
• Miami
• Florida State
• Nebraska
• Missouri
• Arkansas
• Oklahoma State
• Houston
• Colorado
• Nevada
• UNLV
• Utah State
• Southern Miss
• Arkansas State
• UConn
• Tulsa

Conference 3

• LSU
• BYU
• Penn State
• Clemson
• Texas Tech
• Ole Miss
• Miss State
• Iowa State
• Utah
• USF
• Appalachian State
• Akron
• Kent State
• Temple
• Louisiana Tech
• UTEP

Conference 4

• Ohio State
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Illinois
• Kansas
• Kansas State
• Purdue
• Cincinnati
• N. Illinois
• Western Michigan
• Miami (Ohio)
• Ohio
• Toledo
• Bowling Green
• Ball State
• New Mexico State

Conference 5

• Texas A&M
• USC
• Oregon
• UCLA
• Stanford
• TCU
• Oregon State
• Baylor
• SMU
• Rice
• Wyoming
• Troy
• Fresno State
• New Mexico
• Louisiana-Monroe
• North Texas

Conference 6

• Notre Dame
• Texas
• Vanderbilt
• Boston College
• Rutgers
• Virginia
• Pitt
• Maryland
• Wake Forest
• Syracuse
• Navy
• Texas State
• Marshall
• Buffalo
• UTSA
• Old Dominion

Conference 7

• Alabama
• Auburn
• Arizona
• Arizona State
• South Carolina
• Louisville
• Georgia Tech
• West Virginia
• Tulane
• Army
• Memphis
• Georgia State
• UAB
• South Alabama
• FIU
• FAU

Conference 8

• Michigan
• Washington
• Boise State
• Wisconsin
• Northwestern
• Minnesota
• Michigan State
• Colorado State
• Washington St.
• Air Force
• Cal
• San Diego St.
• Central Michigan
• Eastern Michigan
• San Jose St.
• Hawaii

Walters is the Sports Editor of the Times-Union. Contact him at twalters@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Here's how to split up college football for a better CFP experience

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