On the subject of expanding the playoff, I was talking with a co-worker and his suggestion was a 16 team playoff that actually made sense. His proposal was take the top two from each Power 5 conference, the top two Group of 5 teams and four at large teams. ND qualifies as an at large team if they are in the Top 16. Eliminate the conference championship games because they no longer have any value with regards to the playoff since you are taking the top two teams in ranking from each conference anyway. That eliminates one extra game for likely participants. Highest ranked team from each Power 5 conference hosts a home game. This year, it would be:
#1 Alabama vs #21 Fresno State
#2 Clemson vs #15 Texas
#3 ND vs #20 Syracuse
#4 OU vs #13 Washington State
#5 Georgia vs #12 Penn State
#6 Ohio State vs #11 LSU
#7 Michigan vs #10 Florida
#8 UW vs #9 UCF (sorry UCF, you get into the dance but you have to go on the road to do so)
Blue is conference champ, green is Group of 5 rep and red is at large. You could make the argument that no conference gets more than 3 teams, which would push LSU out and let West Virginia in but I bet that wouldn't fly. Overall, the match-ups worked out although I shuffled Texas and Syracuse to avoid a regular season rematch. You'd move the Army Navy game up a week to where the championship week game was at and have the first round of the playoffs at the higher seeded team's home field early in December (December 8th & 9th). Second round would be two weeks later (leaving a week for finals?) (December 21st and 22nd). Third round games to be on New Years Day as Bowl Games like they are now and Championship a week later.
