College Football is broken, here is how I would fix it

I love college football. It's infinitely more interesting than pro football (unless you play fantasy football, which I don't). But it could be even better, here is what I see as college football's biggest problems:

1. Rankings
2. Every game matters too much
3. Out of conference scheduling
4. No playoffs

Rankings matter too much, we shouldn't care about Coaches Polls, AP Polls, computer polls, etc. There are too many polls and none of them should matter when deciding a national champion.

It's really tough for a one loss team to win a national championship, which means colleges that are smart will schedule as many "Northeasterns" as possible. Ideally, colleges should want a tough out of conference schedule to get them ready for the post season.

Without a playoff system, the teams that are extremely lucky and highly thought of in the polls play in the big game. Nothing is decided on the field and there will always be the one or two teams that make tremendous strides during the regular season but have no chance of proving they are the top team in the country.

Here is how we fix this mess:

1. The winner of each major conference (there are 7) gets an automatic bid into the playoffs. This does several things right out of the gate: we no longer care about polls, we can schedule tough out of conference games, and losing one or two games doesn't really matter.

2. The press still gets to pick the 8th and final playoff spot from the remaining conferences and independent teams. (So yes Notre Dame fans, it's still fixed for you.)

3. Force each team to only play 10 games (plus 1 for a conference championship if needed). This will mean that the football season won't last any longer than it currently does (don't forget that they currently take over a month off before the bowl game). And only 2 teams will play an additional 3 games max, so we are talking 14 games maximum, and some teams currently play 13.

4. We can still have several bowls to satisfy the other teams that didn't make the playoffs but had good years. I think the fans would still go to these games and they would still generate lots of money. But let's get real and reduce the number of bowls in half.

Amazingly enough, college basketball has everything right. Polls don't matter that much, they have a great playoff system, and teams schedule tough opponents to HELP their chances of making the playoffs. What an amazing concept!