Now, what kind of change is coming? In a perfect world, a 16 team playoff would be the ideal scenario with the 12 winners from each conference and 4 wild card teams, however, I can see how this could possibly hurt the college football regular season as well which is the one great difference college football has that no other sport has. Their regular season does matter, and every week they do a fantastic job of setting up one or two games that feel like HUGE, national championship caliber games. I don't think college football will ever risk losing that, so I think what we are going to eventually end up with is a scenario where we dismiss the Automatic Qualifying crap from conferences, and we get an 8 team playoff where the teams with the best 8 records go at it for the title. Of course other things will come into play, such as strength of schedule, that will bust up ties and such, but I really think this is what we will eventually get, and it will be fantastic. However, I think what we will first get, the first stepping stone toward this larger goal, will be the plus one system, which will work for me greatly. Imagine if we had the plus one this year: Okie State vs Bama, and LSU vs Stanford, with the winners of those games playing for the title. Who wouldn't have wanted to have seen that this year?
I'd like to take a moment to focus on this statement. This is the common point of emphasis used by those that don't want a playoff. Not saying that those who want a playoff aren't concerned with this as well, but what, exactly, is worth protecting?
The regular season? Not anymore. There are only three schools in the entire FBS that refuse to dilute their schedules with horrid gimme games against FCS opponents: USC, UCLA, and Notre Dame. Everyone else is scheduling them like it's going out of style.
Pac-12 has seen an increase of 600% in FCS opponents, the B1G has seen a 358% increase. 1 in every 4 non-conference games played by the SEC are against FCS opponents. Big 10 plays 21% of its games against FCS opponents. The national average of non-conferences games played against BCS conference teams is 36% and dropping.
For instance, here's is Georgia's non-conference schedule for this up-coming season:
09/01 - Buffalo
09/15 - Florida Atlantic
11/17 - Georgia Southern
11/24 - Georgia Tech
Boy, they really broke the fucking bank with that schedule. That should be sponsored by Hostess.
Here's their 2013 non-conference schedule:
08/31 - at Clemson
09/07 - Appalachian State
09/21 - North Texas
11/30 - at Georgia Tech
Slightly better with the addition of Clemson, but again they're scheduling bullshit FCS opponents.
Georgia is just an example of what happens nation-wide. Teams schedule bullshit opponents because the fear of a loss is too great. That's not protecting the regular season, that's littering it with garbage.
As James Madison and Appalachian State proved, these aren't gimme games per se, but those are the only two instances out of how many games played against FCS opponents? Those are statistical outliers.
As far as I am concerned, there's nothing to protect at this time. The regular season is saturated with these types of matchups and the ones that are made against FBS opponents are usually made against Sun Belt, MAC, & C-USA teams. They're not exactly playing tough opponents like teams used to in the days before the BCS was invented.
Honestly, college football was better under the old bowl system. At least teams pretended to give a shit during the regular season, unlike now.
Your national champion Crimson Tide played Kent State, North Texas, and Georgia Southern.
Think about this for a second. As you pointed out with the Plus 1 model, it would have featured Alabama-Oklahoma State and LSU-Stanford. Can you figure out what's wrong with that? Here, I'll help you.
ALABAMA AND STANFORD DIDN'T WIN THEIR CONFERENCE.
How in the world is Oregon out of a Plus 1 model because they dared to schedule LSU as an OOC game that resulted in a loss, but Stanford is in, despite the fact that they played Duke, San Jose State, and Notre Dame (who has become a staple on their schedule), just because they have one less loss than Oregon?
Nothing about that protects the regular season. Part of the regular season is winning your conference, something Oregon did, but under the Plus 1 model, Stanford is in, Oregon is out.
That's not protecting the regular season, that's trashing it with teams that scheduled the easiest opponents they could find to avoid a loss.
There's nothing left to protect about college football's regular season. It's as much of a joke as the BCS.