Here is how you make the bowl games matter again, keep players from opting out, make the regular season stay important, keep the very best teams in the playoff and don't increase the games too much.

1. 8 team playoff using either the committee or BCS style poll after the bowl games are played,  play home games of the higher ranked seed and the championship is a neutral site like it is currently.

2. Go back to 11 game regular season (independents can play 12 if they want)

3. Get rid of conference divisions and do Big 12 format so you have the best 2 teams.

4. Play the bowl games like they were in the bowl alliance era

5. Every team can play in a bowl game so that they can get that 12th game back, would make for interesting out of conference games for fans of teams that did not perform well and gives everyone equal practice time.

This would keep players from opting out of bowls because they would not know if they were in the playoff or not until after the bowl game.

It would assure you that you got the very best teams, not some thing based on conference championships alone, the conference championship would get you into a bigger bowl game where you could prove you belong.

There would not be too many games played.