College Football playoff

What are the impediments to a college football playoff?
Money and ingrained interests.

College Presidents talk about academics and season length, but we all know that is bogus. After all, in the past few years, the season has increased to 12 games and conferences are adding conference playoffs. Bowl games are also being pushed out well in to January - often after classes have started.

So what can we do to maximize revenue and keep the fans happy with a playoff?
Move some games to the "early" season, especially the cold weather bowls. Detroit in late August sounds a lot better than Detroit in late December. These could be showdowns between expected powerhouses this year. (They would be scheduled after the end of the last season.)
Institute a 16 team playoff. Every conference champion gets a nod, as well as some at large teams. This way, a team can still lose an early season "show down" and make it to the playoffs. There would also still be room in the early season for low-revenue teams to be scheduled as "cupcake paydays".

Start the playoffs a week after Thanksgiving. Play games every Saturday, take a week off for Christmas, and have the championship game on New Years Day.

As an alternative, use an eight team playoff with "mega conference champions getting seeds". (This assumes Pac-10, Big-10 and SEC expand to 16 teams, with Big-12 and WAC dissolving) The seeding of the "smaller" conference playoffs could be determined prior to the season based on past performance. (Thus, the best performing conference would play the worst performing one.) The championship games would be in "known" locations, making travel planning easy for teams.
Pac-16
Big-16
SEC-16
MWC vs CUSA
ACC vs Sun Belt
Big East vs MAC
At Large
At Large

With this schedule, the two top teams would play 11 regular season games, 1 conference championship, and three playoff games for a total of 15 games. This is the same number of games typically played by bowl teams that play a conference championship and a road game at Hawaii.

One of the current regular season games could be transformed in to a "preseason" game. This would give the teams a chance to fill the stadium early in a "less stressful" environment. However, with each conference champion getting a guaranteed playoff spot, this could even be a "real" game without the negative repercussions.

Post season poll games can still be played by the non-playoff teams. (Early exiters from the playoffs may also get a chance at bowl games. These will still have the same impact on the championship as the do today.)

From a financial perspective, the 4 first round playoff games should be similar to the current non-championship BCS bowls. The championship game should be even more of a money maker than the BCS championship. The two semifinal games are pure gravy added on top. Many of the other bowls would still remain.

And finally preseason guarantee games. The early season "bowl" games could provide a heavy financial payout, and provide an opportunity for "last minute" scheduling of current big powers. With the playoffs and early season bowls, even a team stuck in a week conference could get some good games. A "minimum guarantee" based on stadium size or revenue could also be put in place to add some balance to one-off games. (Though without the BCS this is not as important as it was.)

In the end, we have all teams getting more revenue, most teams playing the same number of games, and much more exciting games during the regular season.