I think the fairest proposed playoff system I have seen is one set forth by one of the college football writers for Yahoo.com. He proposes a 16 team playoff that is seeded similarly to the NCAA Basketball tourney, with all confernce champions getting a berth, with a handful of at-large bids. This pool of teams is then seeded based on a committee of independents. Higher seeded teams have home-field advantage until the championship game. This system would address many of the issues of such a large field of teams in that every conference champion would be included, and also provide an oppurtunity for some non-conference champs to get into the mix and correct some issues of tie-breakers (i.e. Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech fiasco from last season).