Problem is Mike most of the "mid Major" conferences cant' get SEC or Big 10 or whatever teams to agree to any home and home series. The big guys, if they will even play them, will only play them on their home field. I know Northern Illinois, which is a marginal team at best most years, has been trying to do this with a number of schools in the Big 10.. They finally got Iowa to "kind of" agree but instead of playing in Dekalb the NIU home game will be played at Soldier Field in Chicago and will probably have 80% hawkeye fans in the stands. the only other wy they get it done is to agree to a Home away Home format with the Big school getting two home games. Florida doesn't want to have to go to Boise and maybe loose. Michigan doesn't want to go to Utah and suffer the same fate.... Louisville got all this same crap when they were in CUSA, now they are in the Big East, terrible conference, Look at the Big East's bowl record this year.
16 team Playoff, 11 game season (If you must have a playoff game in your conference than hey, that counts as one of them), use the Bowl sites as neutrel sites for playoff games and go from there... Let the computers and pollsters pick the top 16 teams, only way it is going to work. No automatic conference bids, no Notre Dame excemption. Just go to town... If that doesn't work than just copy what Division I-AA does, it works for them.