A Fair Way to Determine a National Champion

Keep everything as Idle has it (maybe not Memphis, lol)
Include all the second tier teams (No bottom rung) as 4 conferences. Have the conference champs play for a Gold Cup, silver football, crystal plate, ect…Championship. You could even have at large incorporated. Not hard at all. Just add byes for your 2 top rank teams.

Now, if you feel your team is an actual title contender, not just a coulda, shoulda woulda, then you can forfeit your title rights, and your chance of winning the second tier championship, for a legit shot. Teams will then have to sacrifice to get a shot.
Then they would have to play an at large team at their stadium just to qualify. Teams know how good they are, and they aren’t going to throw all that away for a pipe dream. A Division Title, Conference Title, Region Title & National (Crystal Plate) Title. Schools love hardware, and that’s a lot of hardware.
An interesting development might occur. Some of the teams from the “Big Boys” might drop down or trade places with some of the second tier conferences.

I did the same kind of work 3 years ago, and I know what you went through to try to make everybody happy. I finally gave up and created more of a regional plan, so the only bickering would be done regionally, which most teams and fan bases could handle. Believe me, their will be bickering no matter what, so forget conferences & start drawing lines. As long as you have one conference that thinks their superior or special, they will always screw up your logic.
Lets get the control away from the money boys, and help the NCAA grow some balls again. Do Texas a favor and cut em in half, they might like that?