Trying to consolidate NCAA top tier football here. Dropping down to 80 schools in 8 conferences. Simply put, win your conference, you get into the 12 team playoff. With 10 schools in each conference you can play all 9 conference opponents, leaving 3 non-conference games. The rest of current 1-A schools who didn't make the cut would move down to 1-AA.
Basically taking the existing power 4 conferences with their realignments (67 schools), plus Notre Dame, the leftovers of the Pac12, and the most likely schools that would move up. Conferences like the Big Ten, and SEC retain their traditional schools, ACC, Big XII, and Pac 10 look pretty similar, a football sort of Big East, and stronger versions of AAC and MWC. No need for conference championship games with all teams in a conference playing each other.
For the playoff, the top 4 seeds get a bye, and seeds 5 thru 12 play a first-round games in their home stadiums based on seeding, at large bids would always be ranked 9 thru 12. The national championship game would be at a neutral site.
To keep the bowl tradition alive I would use 8 big bowl games as start of the season neutral site big matchups, which has already started to become a thing. Conferences would have scheduling pairs based on the bowls, so the top 2 teams from each conference play in a big time week 1 (or week zero) matchup, the remaining 8 teams in each conference would pair off with teams from the corresponding conferences as well based on final standings the previous season (for example, the SEC and ACC would have a Peach Bowl matchup for their top teams, so likewise you'd pair teams lower in the standings from those conferences as well). That would leave every team two games on the schedule that are not conference or bowl pairing matchups. The bowls would be Orange (ACC vs East in Miami), Peach (SEC vs ACC in Atlanta), Sugar (SEC vs Big XII in New Orleans), Cotton (Big XII vs AAC in Arlington), Fiesta (MWC vs PAC in Glendale), Rose (PAC vs Big Ten in Pasadena), Citrus Bowl (AAC vs MWC in Orlando), and Liberty Bowl (East vs Big Ten and move it back to Philadelphia).
Uniform wise, the idea is to drop all of these crazy one-off designs and create a solid, identifiable look for each school, home and away. With 80 schools, and keeping their traditional school colors (and uniform design for schools who have a legit standard), it isn't easy to make all of these schools unique looking, but I did as much as I could.
American Athletic Conference:
Taking 4 of the stronger current AAC schools in Memphis, USF, and Tulane and adding back in UCF, SMU, Louisville, and Houston. Arkansas, Missouri, and TCU fill out the rest of the line up, maintaining some rivalries and fitting in geographically.
Atlantic Coast Conference:
Not the full classic ACC lineup, but maintains the modern conference schools that fit regionally in the south Atlantic.
Big Ten Conference:
Classic Big Ten lineup.
Big XII Conference:
Could probably use a new name, but including most of the original conference members, maintaining rivalries.
Big East Conference:
This might have actually been what happened to the conference had they let Penn State in years ago and had stronger football power. Adding in Notre Dame, who has strong fan bases in the northeast markets of the Big East territory and was a non-football member in the late 1990s.
Mountain West Conference:
Bringing in the likes of Colorado, Arizona, and ASU strengthens the conference with along with some of its stronger original members returning.
Pac 10 Conference:
Rivals along the coast all remain, swapping out the Arizona schools for SD State and Fresno State.
Southeastern Conference:
Traditional 10 SEC rivals.
