I know this has been discussed endlessly, but is there any good reason not to mirror the FCS set up?
24 teams make the playoffs, top 8 get byes. No conference championship games - just award conference titles based on regular season and declare co-champs with all the ties as needed in these mega conferences. Keep it simple. Start in early December with the first round (the bottom 16 teams), end in early January. Give players a significant cut/financial incentive to keep playing. Completely wrap up college football before the NFL playoffs start.
If for whatever reason, the old white dudes affiliated with the NY6 bowls still have some kind of power these days (do they?), then tag the quarterfinals with the bowl name/location. It's silly but whatever.
If non playoff teams (power 4 and group of 5) still want to get together and play some type of exhibitions or "bowls," on days there aren't playoff games, have at it. There are probably ways to break away from the current affiliations and allow for more creative/compelling games. Maybe there is a game hosted in Puerto Vallarta...you'd flip that on for 9-3 USC vs 8-4 Texas on some Thursday night in December. Or you get Iowa-BYU in Hawaii. Allow for flexibility and creativity to keep the non-playoff bowls fresh, and don't have too many of them.
Aside from the OSU-Indiana match-up, I thought this past weekend really underscored how silly and meaningless the conference championship games are. Not much compelling football there. And skim that bowl lineup? Gross. I'm a big college football fan and there aren't many games on there I'm interested....even a couple of those first round playoff games aren't likely to be very interesting.