Do something a little differently....like on conference championship weekend, have the six highest-rated, regular season conference champions play at home or at a nearby "neutral" site. Fill out the rest of the field with the next six highest-ranked teams.

All 12 playoff teams would be in action in the first round. The six winners then get re-seeded 1 through 6 with #1 and #2 getting a bye to the semi-finals. No idea how they'd be able to schedule six games in one weekend without staggering the start times, but it works for the NCAA BB Tournament.

For example, the first round might look something like this (post-UT and OU to SEC and the 4 new teams in Big 12):

#1 SEC champ (Alabama) in Atlanta vs # 6 at-large (Florida)
#2 Big 10 champ (Ohio State) in Indianapolis vs #5 at-large (Virginia Tech :-D)
#3 ACC champ (Clemson) in Charlotte vs #4 at-large (Texas A&M)
#4 Pac 12 champ (Oregon) in San Francisco vs #3 at-large (Penn State)
#5 Big 12 champ (Oklahoma State) in Dallas vs #2 at-large (Notre Dame)
#6 Mountain West champ (Boise State) in Las Vegas vs #1 at-large (Oklahoma)

Admittedly, this works out a bit better with the P5 conferences comprised as they are now (with UT and OU in the Big 12) and the top G5 league champ being the sixth auto-bid.

Personally I hate the idea of having a conference championship weekend only to see multiple losing teams turn around and make the playoff. I know under the proposal, the 4 highest-ranked conference champs get byes, but the championship games should be for more than just seeding.

Ideally, I want a six-team playoff with the five highest-ranked conference champs getting auto-bids. Then #6 could be either an at-large, or go to a sixth conference champ if deserving. This would still enable the conference championship games to act as a de facto first round playoff.