In response to the “Mandel Plan” for a college football playoff, I now present the “Hack Plan”. The Mandel Plan calls for a 4-team playoff (the so-called “plus-one” model) and it’s pretty good, but in my opinion it fails to address one inequity in the current system of selecting the national champion: what happens when a team is good enough to contend for the national title but happens not to be in the top 4 of the BCS rankings? For example, in 2007 Hawaii finished 12-0 but finished 10th in the BCS standings, while three out of the top 4 in the BCS standings had 2 losses apiece. In an effort to deal with these inequities, I present a format of an 8-team playoff with the following selection process:

1) Throw out the human polls and just use the computer rankings as they are currently inserted into the BCS formula. People are understandably leery of using computers to pick the top 2 teams in the country, but I don’t think anyone can make a reasonable argument that the computers would not include the top 2 teams in the country in and among their top 8. Under this format, the current top 16 would be:
1. Florida
2. Alabama
3. Cincinnati
4. TCU
5. Texas
6. Boise State
7. Georgia Tech
8. LSU
9. Iowa
10. Oregon
11. USC
12. Miami (FL)
13. (13t) Ohio State
14. (13t) Pittsburgh
15. Arizona
16. Houston

2) Choose the top 4 “seeds”, which are chosen to be the top 4 ranked conference champions (for these purposes, the top-ranked independent would be treated as equivalent to a conference champion). These 4 teams would host first-round playoff games the week before Christmas. In this case, those teams would be Florida, Cincinnati, TCU, and Texas.
3) Attempt to fill out the remaining four spots with conference champions ranked from highest to lowest in the top-12 of the computer rankings. In this case, they would be Boise State, Georgia Tech, Iowa, and Oregon.
4) If the 8 spots are not filled after step 3, take wild card teams (non conference champions) ranked from highest to lowest provided (a) they are ranked in the top 8 of the computer rankings, and (b) no other team from that conference has already been selected as a wild card. (For example, if there were only 6 conference champions in the top-12, Alabama would be selected as a wild card. LSU would not, because Alabama took the SEC’s wild card spot. USC would not be selected either because in the initial selection, wild cards would have to be in the top-8.
5) If the 8 spots are not filled after step 4, take additional conference champions, in order, ranked between 13 and 16.
6) If the 8 spots are not filled after step 5, take additional wild cards, in order, ranked between 9 and 12.
7) After the 8 teams are selected, a committee including representatives from each of the four major bowls, representatives of the FBS conferences, and representatives of the NCAA meet to determine the first-round pairings. They take into consideration such factors as preventing potential rematches until the championship game and geography (to minimize travel costs and encourage visiting fans to travel to the game. In this example, the committee might come up with Florida vs. Georgia Tech, Cincinnati vs. Iowa, TCU vs. Oregon, and Texas vs. Boise State.
8) The first round games feed into two of the Big 4 bowl games which serve as semifinal games on or about New Year’s Day. The National Championship is held at a different Big 4 site the following week, just as it is now.
9) Meanwhile, the two big bowls that don’t host semifinal games get to choose teams that didn’t make the playoffs for Meaningless Marquee Matchups (MMM’s), which (let’s face it) is exactly what the BCS bowls are now. The bowl that would not be involved in the playoffs this year (Sugar Bowl) would get its first choice of teams for an MMM, and the bowl that later hosts the National Championship (Rose Bowl) gets the last choice. Each bowl selects two of the four highest ranked eligible teams remaining, but a team is not eligible if another team from its conference has already been selected as a wild card or as an MMM participant. (So, in our example, the Sugar Bowl would get to choose from Alabama/LSU, USC, Miami, or Ohio State. Assuming the Sugar Bowl took Alabama and Miami, the Rose Bowl would get to choose from USC/Arizona, Ohio State, Pittsburgh, and Houston)
10) Using current standings as an example, here is how the format would look this year:
First round (week before Christmas):
Georgia Tech at Florida
Iowa at Cincinnati
Oregon at TCU
Boise State at Texas
Second round, and MMM games:
Orange Bowl: Semifinal game (Winners at Florida and TCU)
Sugar Bowl: MMM: Alabama vs. Miami
Fiesta Bowl: Semifinal game (Winners at Cincinnati and Texas)
Rose Bowl: MMM: USC vs. Ohio State
Championship
At Pasadena: National Championship Game

Under this format, the championship game would continue to rotate between the big 4 bowl sites. When the Orange or Fiesta Bowls hosts the championship, the Rose and Sugar Bowls host semifinals, and vice versa.

Now, since I used 2007 as an example of how the plus-one model would be inadequate, let’s see how the Hack Plan stands up to that year. First, the computer standings:
1. Virginia Tech (ACC champ)
2. LSU (SEC champ)
3. Ohio State (Big-10 champ)
4. Missouri
5. Kansas
6. (6t) Oklahoma (Big-12 champ)
7. (6t) Georgia
8. Arizona State
9. USC (Pac-10 champ)
10. West Virginia (Big East champ)
11. Florida
12. Hawaii (WAC champ)
13. Boston College
14. South Florida
15. Clemson
16. Illinois
17. Tennessee
18. Virginia
19. BYU

Select four host teams: Virginia Tech, LSU, Ohio State, and Oklahoma
Select other four teams: USC, West Virginia, Hawaii, and Missouri
Create pairings (making sure to avoid Oklahoma-Missouri and LSU-Virginia Tech rematches) and other bowls select MMM’s:
First round:
West Virginia at Virginia Tech
Missouri at Ohio State
Hawaii at LSU
USC at Oklahoma
Second round:
Orange Bowl: Semifinal (V-tech and Ohio State winners)
Sugar Bowl (MMM #2): Boston College vs. Illinois
Fiesta Bowl: Semifinal (LSU and Oklahoma winners)
Rose Bowl (MMM #1): Arizona State vs. Georgia
Championship:
At Sugar Bowl in New Orleans

Advantages to this system:
1) No automatic bids. Every conference champ is treated the same, regardless of if you are from the SEC or the Sun Belt. A 3-loss conference champion is not guaranteed a trip to a Big Bowl, let alone the playoffs.
2) The system encourages teams to schedule at least one marquee non-conference opponent. Hawaii failed to do this, and even though they went undefeated they just barely qualified for the playoff field. Additionally, conference champions can dramatically improve their chances of playing a first-round game at home by scheduling a marquee non-conference opponent, improving their strength of schedule.
3) Every team in the FBS has a chance to win the national title, no matter where they start or end up in any of the human polls.
4) The Big Bowls have the same money-making potential that they currently have. In addition, since now they host 3 meaningful games every 4 years instead of just 1, that money-making potential is more likely to go up than down.
5) The first round games are virtually guaranteed to be sellouts since they are played at home sites. Between tickets and television revenue, it should not be hard to figure out the contractual arrangements to make sure that all teams are compensated comparably to BCS-bowl payouts.
6) Fans of teams making the national championship game (likely teams that hosted first round games) would only have to travel afar twice to follow their teams, the same as in the Mandel Plan.
7) The season would not drag on into January, but would end on the same schedule that it currently does.
8) The rest of the bowls would be able to carry on as usual, and with additional meaningful games in late December, it might generate some additional interest for 2nd-tier bowl games.

Just my thoughts. As Stewart Mandel muses, this has a 0.0 percent chance of getting adopted any time soon.