Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Watering down the schedule is not the answer.    If the Big Ten misses the playoffs, so be it.    

The real key is when they do get in, don't lose 38-0 in the semi-finals.

These two videos show all of the points ever scored by the B1G in the CFP:

• 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwwdM-RwdfQ
• 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_rxv53l6pU

It was a great start but since then, not so good:

• 2015:  MSU lost 38-0 to Bama
• 2016:  tOSU lost 31-0 to Clemson
• 2017:  left out completely
• 2018:  left out completely

One thing that kills some lower tier schools is when they talk about bama, Clemson, osu , Georgia etc the talking heads say “they look bthe part, ie they got 5 stars and 1st round picks. So it’s completely unfair if say Iowa was 12–1 this year, they’d prob be ranked 7th, 8th? And that’s BS

Also if BIG wants in playoff they gotta cut to 8 conference games and let people play cupcakes, because the committe is really giving the SEC a lot of credit to teams going 8-4 (4-4 sec) and 7-5 (3-5 sec) in terms of SOS, so BIG needs to do the same. I think it sucks, I’d rather see good games but that’s what committe values 

To clarify why I prefer 5+1 to 4:

It has precious little to do with what is or feels fair at the end of the season. I also very minimally care about putting on the best playoff show.
All I care about is the playoff hurting the feel and significance of the regular season the least and boosting it the most.
4 hurts the regular season a lot. 5+1 and 2 (but especially the now-impossible pre-BCS) do the best job of valuing the regular season.
On this, I don't have any nuanced opinions about 8 or 12. Because I also dislike playoffs in general (for their increased risk of eliminating the best team), and those are too big for me to even give a chance.

I'd REALLY like to see B1G commish Jim get up to the podium and address the issue/issues

First of all, he should state that the B1G is not going to change it's scheduling to water down it's contests for it's players, programs, and fans just to try to sneak into the playoff to grab a few dollars.

Then he should call out the SEC commish for that very thing and also call him out for whining and begging to get in a second team that did not win the conference, scheduled Austin Peay, Middle Tennessee, & UMass

Fewer individuals have been worse for our sport the last twenty years than Jim Delany. Expansion, bloated administrations, redefining our core around television, insufficient diplomacy. He didn't invent these but he sold and amplified each. 
He's been a parasite.

Also not remotely likely.
Let's try to stay in reality here.

hah, you do realize who you're dealing with?

And that year, MSU narrowly edged out Iowa. At which point MSU got the honor of being utterly destroyed by Alabama and Iowa got the honor of being utterly destroyed by Stanford.
Maybe Stanford should have been in the CFP. But the always-accurate transitive property, clearly they would have put up more of a fight for Bama than MSU or Iowa would have... But we can't allow that because clearly a 1-loss Iowa (ranked #5 after CCG) and a 1-loss MSU (ranked #3) must be better than a 2-loss Stanford (ranked #6).

I'm certainly not arguing in favor of ranking based on # of losses alone.  
One of my biggest disappointments in the CFP so far is that the committee has ALWAYS done that when it counted.  They do have 2-loss UGA ahead of 1-loss tOSU this year but that is for 5/6 and I honestly do NOT think they would have done that if it had been for 4/5 instead.  Now in THIS case I don't think they should anyway because while UGA's losses are clearly better their wins aren't.  They have wins over ranked teams:

• Over #10 Florida by 19
• Over #14 Kentucky by 17
• Over #23 Mizzou by 14

Then they have a 20 point loss to #11 LSU and a TD loss to #1 Bama
Ohio State has wins:

• Over #7 Michigan by 23
• Over #12 PSU by 1
• Over #22 NU by 21

IMHO, tOSU's wins are slightly better while tOSU's loss is obviously worse than either of UGA's losses the Buckeyes still only have one vs UGA's two.  

I think you can reasonably argue this one either way but what I really don't like is their ridiculous overrating of UCF.  UCF has ZERO wins over ranked teams.  They shouldn't be in the top-15.  If you want CFP consideration, schedule a real opponent now and then.  

I'm certainly not arguing in favor of ranking based on # of losses alone.  
One of my biggest disappointments in the CFP so far is that the committee has ALWAYS done that when it counted.  They do have 2-loss UGA ahead of 1-loss tOSU this year but that is for 5/6 and I honestly do NOT think they would have done that if it had been for 4/5 instead.  

But that's my point. It's easier to do it when it's an 11-2 Stanford [that won its CCG] or an 11-2 Georgia [that didn't], but it's not whether or not this is the best team.
Likewise, I don't think Notre Dame is one of the best 4 teams in the nation, but there was NO way they weren't getting in. 
I'm not arguing against Notre Dame based on resume. They deserve to be in. But I don't believe they're one of the best 4 teams, and I think Clemson is going to show that convincingly.
I keep highlighting these points because, as I've consistently said, the BCS or the CFP puts us in the question of whether you want the "most deserving teams" or the "best teams". Most deserving is based on resume. "Best" is based on a subjective evaluation by the experts.
The committee is inconsistent. Georgia might be better than OSU, but they're not as deserving when you consider resume. Yet the committee puts them 5th to insulate themselves from the argument of whether it should be OU or OSU in the playoff. OU/UGA/OSU are probably better than Notre Dame. But Notre Dame gets the benefit of the doubt based on resume; I'm not convinced it's based on quality. 
5+1+2 gives you the best of both worlds. It gives you six teams who deserve to be there because of what they've accomplished ON the field--they won their conference. And it gives you two at-large teams so that teams who legitimately are some of the best in the nation are not excluded.