Flagging serious consequences if nothing is done, Bartlett said the game is "becoming like rugby" and is being tactically "hijacked" by interchanges.
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"I'm confident the game would be better without interchange, pick your best 18 and have six to eight players on the bench to cover injury and flexibility for the coach, but once you've come off, you can't come back on," Bartlett told his SEN listeners.
"No longer is the bench about covering injured players, interchange is now running at an average of 129 per game," he said.
"Interchange has hijacked the game to such a point now that it's becoming like rugby, it's not an indigenous game of Australian Rules football any more.
"I think we'd see better kicking, I think we'd see more marking, I think we'd see more contest, I think it'd be a better game.
"Interchange was never ever brought into the game so that you could have 160 interchanges in a game and have players running in huge masses around the ground."
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But Bartlett said he would draw the line at a suggestion from Greater Western Sydney coach Kevin Sheedy that five forwards and five defenders be restricted to inside the 50m arcs.
"I have never supported any move that stops players from having full access to the field of play except at centre bounces," he said.
Bartlett's radical suggestion carries extra weight because of his position on the AFL's powerful laws of the game committee.
Matt Thompson is a reporter for AFL Media. Follow him on Twitter @MattThompsonAFL
