Just for kicks, taking the 72 highest football revenue schools (although there's a little room for argument about which are the top 72), so all current P5 (sort of: I kicked out Air Force and excluded UNLV so that I could add Wazzu and Oregon State back in, and for some reason SMU didn't make it--but I think SMU should replace Houston, below), plus the six highest non-P5 schools, here is ChatGPT's output of conferences of based on geographic proximity (with a little tweaking from me to try to counteract ChatCPT's desire to maintain old conferences). This easily gets to a 16-team playoff with 9 conference champions, and 7 wild cards:
Upper Midwest / Great Lakes East· Northwestern (Chicago, IL)
· Illinois (Champaign, IL)
· Notre Dame (South Bend, IN)
· Purdue (West Lafayette, IN)
· Indiana (Bloomington, IN)
· Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI)
· Michigan State (East Lansing, MI)
· Ohio State (Columbus, OH)
(Great Lakes core, tight cluster around MI/IL/IN/OH)
Central Midwest / Plains / Great Lakes West· Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN)
· Wisconsin (Madison, WI)
· Iowa (Iowa City, IA)
· Iowa State (Ames, IA)
· Nebraska (Lincoln, NE)
· Kansas (Lawrence, KS)
· Kansas State (Manhattan, KS)
· Missouri (Columbia, MO)
(Plains + central Midwest pod, tightly grouped in IA/NE/KS/MO/West of Great Lakes )
Northeast / New England· Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA)
· Syracuse (Syracuse, NY)
· Rutgers (Piscataway, NJ)
· Penn State (State College, PA)
· Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA)
· Maryland (College Park, MD)
· West Virginia (Morgantown, WV)
· Virginia (Charlottesville, VA)
(Compact East Coast cluster, from MA down through VA/WV)
Mid-Atlantic / Upper South· Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA)
· Duke (Durham, NC)
· North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC)
· NC State (Raleigh, NC)
· Wake Forest (Winston-Salem, NC)
· Louisville (Louisville, KY)
· Kentucky (Lexington, KY)
· Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH)
(Virginia + North Carolina schools anchored with nearby KY/OH neighbors)
Atlantic Southeast· Clemson (Clemson, SC)
· South Carolina (Columbia, SC)
· Georgia (Athens, GA)
· Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA)
· Florida (Gainesville, FL)
· Florida State (Tallahassee, FL)
· Miami (FL) (Miami, FL)
· UCF (Orlando, FL)
(Classic Southeast coastal cluster, centered in SC/GA/FL)
South / Gulf States· Alabama (Tuscaloosa, AL)
· Auburn (Auburn, AL)
· Tennessee (Knoxville, TN)
· Vanderbilt (Nashville, TN)
· LSU (Baton Rouge, LA)
· Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR)
· Ole Miss (Oxford, MS)
· Mississippi State (Starkville, MS)
(Deep South inland cluster, focused on AL/MS/TN/AR/LA)
Texas & Oklahoma· Texas (Austin, TX)
· Texas A&M (College Station, TX)
· Baylor (Waco, TX)
· TCU (Fort Worth, TX)
· Texas Tech (Lubbock, TX)
· Houston (Houston, TX)
· Oklahoma (Norman, OK)
· Oklahoma State (Stillwater, OK)
(Perfect Texas-Oklahoma pod — self-contained, all within short regional travel)
[SMU isn't here. Based on revenue it should bounce Houston, but I'm not redoing this thing.]
Pacific Southwest· USC (Los Angeles, CA)
· UCLA (Los Angeles, CA)
· Stanford (Palo Alto, CA)
· California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
· San Diego State (San Diego, CA)
· Arizona (Tucson, AZ)
· Arizona State (Tempe, AZ)
· Fresno State (Fresno, CA)
Northwest/Mountain · Oregon (Eugene, OR)
· Oregon State (Corvallis, OR)
· Washington (Seattle, WA)
· Washington State (Pullman, WA)
· Colorado (Boulder, CO)
· Utah (Salt Lake City, UT)
· BYU (Provo, UT)
· Boise State (Boise, ID)
The military academies get left out of this, which impacts Navy and Air Force more than Army, but that's what the second tier / promotion/relegation is for.
Here's how it looks on a map:
The Upper Midwest (red) and Gulf (brown) conferences are tough. They are going to want extra consideration when it comes time to pick wildcards. The Mid-Atlantic feels a little soft.
