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Post being replied to

To your final question by KeoughCharles05

I do see March Madness as a flawed system if the goal is to award a champion for the whole season, as opposed to simply being an entertaining tournament. There have been a number of March Madness champs that had no real business laying claim to the title, but got hot for six games over three weekends.

As to my 4th paragraph, I wouldn't say the point of the single elimination tournament I propose is to validate a team -- we've already validated them as having a legitimate claim through whatever process we've chosen that amalgamates overall season performance. The point of the playoff in this section is that it seems like the best system for actually resolving what might be several legitimate competing claims. "Settling it on the field" is actually a great concept, if a game on the field will settle the matter.

There's no way for all college football teams to play each other in the manner of, say, the EPL. With such expansive conference schedules, there's precious little opportunity for real cross-conference comparison, but there is at least some. We can generally winnow down the field of contenders to a relatively small number. It might vary year to year, but it has never been as large as 12. While an ideal format would vary year to year to account for this, that's almost certainly unrealistic in a world where things must be scheduled and booked further in advance than this would allow for, and potential game sites and TV partners want more revenue stability. If we have to pick a fixed number of teams to include, I'd rather err on the side of excluding a potentially deserving team than including an obviously undeserving one. 2, 4, and 6 all have decent arguments for being the right number. I'd lean toward 4. But 12 is absurd.