Couple of things that everyone needs to understand (and the columnist didn't understand it himself) before you get going with your ideas...
1) The BCS system was developed to generate money and keep it out of the NCAA's hands. Therefore, anything we have now or will ever have will be about the money and not the competition.
2) As long as the NCAA is the sanctioning body, and as long as the system is tilted so far toward the little guy (there are only around 70 legitimate football schools in the country, but 120 total D-1 schools plus all of D-1AA, D-II and D-III), we're not going to have a playoff because the NCAA would then get its hands on it.
3) In other words, we're already at the stalemate position. The NCAA retains rules enforcement, its schools get richer (and are thus "taxed" on that money to pay for minor sports) but the NCAA doesn't get greedy for the money.
In other words, everyone who matters is happy, and -- and this is the most important thing -- NO ONE INSIDE THE SPORT ITSELF is seriously calling for a playoff. Those calls have come from fans who think (erroneously, in my opinion) that the NFL system is superior, and/or from politicians posturing for votes.
But let's say the writer has it mostly right, and we're about to have a revolution in football. At that point, the NCAA will have to either be beggars, or try to leverage their position with basketball and tell the BCS/FBS schools that they can pick the "new" league, or stay in the NCAA and participate in basketball and the other minor sports, but can't do both. Many schools who could be a part of the football landscape will therefore not go, including at least two schools (Kentucky and Vanderbilt) from the SEC, Duke and North Carolina and perhaps a big chunk of the Big East and CUSA.
I suspect you'd get around 50 schools to take the plunge, which is significantly less than 70, and that will affect the money, because when you cut 120 D-1 teams down to 50, you cut down on your audience significantly. Many of college football's powers (Alabama, Oklahoma, Nebraska, LSU, Ohio State, Penn State) come from rural areas, or at least what pro sports leagues call "small markets." That will affect how much advertising can be generated for telecasts.
In other words, the economic boon this writer probably sees isn't going to materialize. And we haven't touched on what will happen to the basketball programs at these schools plus the minor sports. Now all of a sudden you are back to using football dollars to supplement the second-tier sports.
Then we have the intangibles -- undefeated seasons, probably gone. Sanctity of the regular season, gone if you have playoffs. Bowls and the associated pageantry, gone. Homecoming-type opponents that you can play to rest your starters, gone. Expenses, up. You also have to figure out how you're going to address recruiting violations and the like, or whether you're going to pay players a stipend, or whether you just plan to have an anything-goes attitude, which hurts Alabama because other schools are much more adept at exploiting those systems.
If I'm trying to make it sound like a bad idea -- I am. College football is not pro football for a reason. Some fans apparently only care about their own entertainment without appreciating the big picture. I see no reason to support 14-game seasons, plus playoffs, played among only top-level teams using players who are doing all this for free -- especially if it divides the college football landscape in the process and creates two worlds within high-level football, the NCAA world and the "new" world.