OK -- let's get into specifics. Open your mind.

As I said in my last post, there are 120 teams in D1-A. I'm a numbers person, and that's a nice, round number to work with.

Currently, 116 of those teams are in 11 conferences, and there are 4 independent teams. The breakdown:

• BCS conferences (65 teams): ACC (12), Big East (8), SEC (12), Big 10 (11), Big 12 (12), PAC 10 (10)
• Non-BCS conferences (51 teams): Sun Belt (8), Conference USA (12), MAC (13), Mtn. West (9), WAC (9)
• Independent (4 teams)

As I said in my previous post, only the 65 BCS teams and Notre Dame realistically have a chance to win it all. And even after their respective seasons in 2008, Washington (0-12) has a far better opportunity at a National Championship in 2009 than Utah (13-0). That ain't right.

One of the many problems is that there's so much inconsistency -- levels of competition, BCS tie-ins, polls, strengths of leagues, etc. And college football has no umbrella over it. Sure, the NCAA enforces rules and scholarship limits and the like, but in terms of consistency of competition and creating an apples-to-apples relationship between all teams, it's no good. There needs to be an overarching strategy and structure to it.

This is where I come in. And this is where you have to open your mind from the status quo and accept a different perspective. I think it could also lead to a more equitable way to determine a true National Champion. The concept is the easy part; something like this actually happening would be the tough part.

So my suggestion is this: tie each BCS conference with a Non-BCS conference -- they'll be tied together for promotion and relegation. Whether they're called Tier 1 & 2 of the BCS conference, or whether the non-BCS conference keeps its own identity and feeds to the BCS leagues could be determined later. Every conference/tier will have 10 teams.

One of the big mental hurdles to overcome is that some teams are going to have to switch conferences to accommodate this plan, but I tried to do it in a logical way. Then again, countless teams in the past 20 years have changed conference affiliations for more money, so it shouldn't be that big a deal. And yes, Notre Dame, you're going to have to be in a conference. Deal with it. Maybe you can keep your TV deal. It's not like you've gotten a bunch of bowl money recently to split anyway.

But the football conference members won't necessarily match the members for other sports, but we can get past that. The Big East has 16 basketball teams (including -- NOTRE DAME!!), and it's done in hockey and other smaller sports, so we can handle this.

I tried to tie the conferences together geographically so it makes sense. I think it works pretty well:

• Big East -- let's go old-school and call it the Metro conference (independents, other overflow)
• ACC -- Sun Belt
• SEC -- Conf. USA
• Big 10 -- MAC
• Big 12 -- Mtn. West
• PAC 10 -- WAC

Who's where? Stay tuned.