It makes little sense to have 16-18 conference members, have completely unbalanced schedules, no divisions, and convoluted tie breaker scenarios and hope that makes sense. Gets even worse if these conferences continue to expand. We are so far away from smaller conferences with round robin (or close enough) schedules and clear conference leaders.

One less scheduled conference game. Top 4 go to two week conference playoff. Remaining teams get a conference flex game scheduled among the non-playoff teams.

Winner most like gets a bye to the playoff.