If I were given dictatorial power to make changes in the college football landscape -- like the ancient Romans, perhaps some great crisis comes along and they concentrate all power in one man -- here is what I would do with regards to college football's postseason:
There shouldn't be a BCS, and the bowls should go back to their old tie-ins, with the major bowls played on or very close to New Year's Day. With the exception of conference champions, I would forbid bowl games from hosting teams from the same two conferences two years in a row. The following bowl games would represent conference tie-ins:
The Rose Bowl: PAC-12 vs B1G 10
The Sugar Bowl: SEC vs at-large
Orange Bowl: ACC vs at-large
Fiesta Bowl: Big East vs at-large
Cotton Bowl: The Big 12 (or whatever replaces it) vs at-large
If a minor conference team or independent goes undefeated and is ranked higher than any major conference champion, then one of the bowls must take that team. If none of the bowls with open spots are willing to do so, then the decision is made by lot.
ON PLAY-OFFS/THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP:
The push for a play-off in college football is motivated in large part by the idea that there is an inherent value in crowning a national champion. As professional baseball has the World Series, as pro football has the Super Bowl, etc etc, people think that college football must, like any other competitive sporting event, pick one team at the end of the competitive schedule and claim that team as the best team in the country.
I do not agree with this. There's no inherent value in picking a national champion, whatever the method you use. It's only important so far as the methods used to pick that champion are themselves worthwhile. Let's use the ACC football title as an example. The inherent value of being the champion of the ACC has not changed since the creation of a conference championship game following the ACC's expansion. But the mediocre games, lame match-ups, and half-empty stadiums have the ACC look bad. I think the 2008 game is the best example, a snoozer between BC and Virginia played in front of 27,000 paying customers.
Having a championship, of any kind, is only worthwhile if there is some other value in it. I don't think there's sufficient value in a college football championship game or declaration of "national champion," at least not more value than we currently have in the bowl system/regional loyalties that college football currently boasts.* No matter how fun a ten-team playoff might be, there's too much that would be lost from the current system in pursuit of a goal that's just not, when you get right down to it, that important.
That said,
IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO HAVE A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP:
The bowls play in the first day or two of the new year. The next week, take the conference champions who won their bowl games and seed them 1-4 as based on whatever rankings you want to use (we can keep the BCS, or use the polls, but I would favor strength of schedule). In the unlikely event that all five bowl games see conference champions win their games, then use whatever ranking system you're using to pick the four candidates.
Take the other winners of the bowl games and rank them 2-4 as needed. These four teams are your playoff.
The first round would be played the first Saturday that is five or more days after the bowls are finished, and each game will be played at the home stadium of the higher ranked team. The championship game would be played the following week at a rotating location that, to avoid home fieldish advantage or a let-down-type ticket situation, cannot be the same as any of the locations use for a bowl game, conference championship game, or neutral site game that season.
So, using 2010 as an example, the major bowl match-ups might have been as follows:
The Rose Bowl: Oregon vs Ohio State
The Sugar Bowl: Auburn vs Wisconsin
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs Arkansas
Fiesta Bowl: UConn vs Stanford
Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma vs TCU
Note that in this case because TCU is a conference champion, if they win, they get to the first round of conference teams eligible for the play-offs. Let's say Oregon, Auburn, Arkansas, Stanford, and TCU won. First seeding the conference champions who won their bowls, we get Auburn, Oregon, TCU seeded 1-3. Second, we need one more team, so we take Stanford, as the hypothetically highest ranked winning team besides the conference champs. The playoff would see Auburn hosting Stanford and Oregon hosting TCU. The winner of those games would meet at a neutral site for the national championship.
*This is the same reason that SEC expansion into Oklahoma or West Virginia or Virginia is a bad idea. If you were building a new conference right now, you wouldn't have two teams in Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee, but that geographic continuity results in a social and cultural similarity that strengthens the conference and thus its football product. The SEC is more than the sum of its parts, and expansion scenarios should keep that in mind.
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