Totally agree. This is the same logic that was used to restrict the NCAA basketball tournament for years. The basketball tournament doesn't lessen the regular season, it just divides it up into 2 distinct flavors, regular season and playoffs. Teams should still seek out and want conference titles, but it doesn't exclude you from the playoffs if your division happened to be a meat-grinder or penalize a team for playing a really good non-con schedule and losing a game.
Have a 24-team playoff, top 8 seeds get byes first week, 16 teams play. 8 winners play the 8 byes. There is the reward for being really good in the regular season, you get a bye and then you get to play at home the next game. Once you get to Final 8, you can incorporate the bowls as sites if you want, but I don't care if they blow up the bowls altogether other than the minor ones for the teams making the playoffs. Every team has a shot at making the playoff is they have a really good season. In that setup, Iowa is hosting Memphis in a first-round game. Winner plays at LSU, or you could re-seed after every round based on who won/lost, I don't care. The money for the schools (and players) would be astronomical, and the games would be meaningful.