College Sports Only's 80-team proposal: eight 10-team conferences whose title games feed a playoff (via OutKick)
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
- Proposal: College Sports Only (X account); article: Ian Miller (OutKick)
- Author type
- social media account (proposal), reported by a sports writer
- Date
- Dec 12, 2025 (Published Dec. 12, 2025, 7:34 PM EST (OutKick). The underlying X post is described as posted 'this week'; it was not fetched.)
- Original
- https://www.outkick.com/sports/college-football-playoff-system-broken-despite-recent-expansion-new-restructuring-proposal-emerges
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-01
Summary
OutKick's Ian Miller writes up a proposal from the College Sports Only account on X. College football's top level would become an 80-team 'league' of eight 10-team conferences, each playing nine conference games so every team plays every other. Each conference championship game, between the top two teams, would act as the first round of a 16-team playoff, and the 8 conference winners would advance. The national championship would be at the Rose Bowl. The article argues this replaces the committee with clear criteria, makes conference title games matter again, returns to regional alignment and forces programs like Notre Dame into a conference.
Key elements
| Number of teams | 80 teams in the top-level 'league.' The team-by-team list is in an image in the article and is not reproduced here. |
|---|---|
| Conferences | Eight 10-team conferences, aligned by region (the article contrasts this with Cal and Stanford in the ACC). Notre Dame would have to join a conference full-time. |
| Playoff size | Described as a 16-team playoff: the 8 conference championship games (top two teams in each conference) are the first round, and the 8 winners advance. |
| Selection method | No committee. The top two in each conference meet in the championship game, with head-to-head results as tiebreakers. |
| Season calendar | Nine conference games per team (full round robin). Other calendar details are not stated in the article. |
| Bowls | The national championship would be played at the Rose Bowl. Other bowls are not discussed. |
| Rivalries | Regional conferences; the article does not discuss specific rivalries. |
| Revenue / other | Not addressed. The article ties the problem to committee decisions (e.g., Alabama's selection after the 2025 SEC championship) and says SEC/ESPN power and lobbying made that game meaningless. |
Related ideas in the Ideas index
- 2. Power 4 breakaway, super league or separate top division (an 80-team top-level 'league' (a separate top tier))
- 9. Playoff expansion to 16, 24 or more teams (conference title games as the first round of a 16-team playoff)
- 10. Fixed title-game site at the Rose Bowl (national championship at the Rose Bowl)
- 12. Scheduling: standardize schedules, reward tough non-conference games (uniform nine-game conference schedules)
- 13. Preserve rivalries; geography-based conferences via pooled media rights (regional conferences)
Notes
The proposal comes from a social media account; the article is OutKick commentary ('It's worth a shot'). The original X post was not fetched, so details come from the OutKick write-up only. The article calls it a 16-team playoff, but the text describes 8 conference winners advancing from the 16 teams in the conference title games.