The Power 4 decide to break away from the NCAA for football, with the champions of the ACC, BIG 0x10, SEC and PAC16 being the four playoff teams. Rules are reworked to allow something other than two divisions of eight, to allow conference teams to play each other more frequently. Notre Dame doesn't budge on their desire to be independent, so the rules are also updated to give them a path to play for the ACC championship. Texas pulls the same thing, and makes a similar deal with the PAC (since the B1G and SEC want no part of a deal like that).

Since each conference needs to get to 16, here is how it plays out:

As the big boys, the B1G and SEC make the first moves, with each needing two to get to 16. To keep the politicians happy, they split the OK and KS teams: SEC doesn't need to strengthen football, so they take Kansas and Oklahoma State. The B1G grabs Oklahoma, and adding Kansas State allows them to keep a contiguous footprint.

With the top prizes off the table, the ACC decides that going halfway across the country makes no sense and adds West Virginia.

Along with Texas, the PAC needs to add three. Texas Tech seems like a good choice, but they decide to go off the board for the final two and pull in BYU and Houston.

TCU, Baylor and Iowa State end up on the outside.