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They won't even take a one loss Buckeye squad half the time. 

Well, it all depends on who you're excluding.

We've been talking about excluding 2-loss teams. I'm not saying that you exclude a 1-loss P5 conference champ or even a 1-loss P5 team that narrowly missed its CCG in order to reward a tallest midget who doesn't have the SOS to justify their spot.

I'm saying that if you get through three spots and you've run out of viable 1-loss P5 teams, I'm taking an undefeated G5 over a 2-loss helmet for that 4th spot. I don't believe a 2-loss team has proven they deserve to be there, even if they're better.

I guess my main problem with this argument is that if you are flat out admitting (even if just for the sake of argument) that the 2-loss P5 Champion IS better than the undefeated G5 then to go and argue that the better team should be excluded is just ridiculous to me.  

I think in general that SoS should be given more weight than it generally is and not just to exclude cupcake-fattened tallest midgets but also to differentiate P5 teams.  

I want to make this example NOT my team.  Lets say that Penn State had scheduled Pitt (a not atypical OOC opponent for them), Auburn (whom they actually played this year), and Georgia as their OOC instead of Auburn, BallSt, and Villanova.  Penn State's SoS is already #26.  If you made those changes then their schedule would be:

• #1 UGA
• #4 tOSU
• #6 Michigan
• #7 Michigan State
• #11 Iowa
• #16 Auburn
• #25 Pitt
• #31 Wisconsin
• #40 Maryland
• #48 Illinois
• #57 Indiana
• #91 Rutgers

That is insane, but I'd love it!  I want to see teams schedule like this or at least more like this and the push from a bunch of you on this board to reward teams for going 13-0 against the little sisters of the poor is counter-productive to that goal.  The sport should encourage Cincy to schedule like FSU circa 1981 because those match-ups were great to see.  

If W's and L's are treated as infinitely more important than whom you beat or lost to then we can expect teams to respond by scheduling trash so as to maximize their chances of getting to 13-0.  

I'd rather reward teams that play a tough SoS so that teams will respond by scheduling quality matchups.  

This is where I get hung up. We'll gladly take a 2-loss conference champion OSU with one OOC and one conference loss and toss them in the playoff. But we won't take a 2-loss conference champion Arizona State, ever.

Yet another reason for 5+1+2 (or 6+2).

This sounds like you are assuming that a 2-loss conference champion OSU would actually make it but lets look at tOSU's rankings each year of the CFP:

• #4 in 2014 as a 1-loss B1G Champion.  
• #7 in 2015 as a 1-loss non-Champion*.  
• #3 in 2016 as a 1-loss non-Champion*.  
• #5 in 2017 as a 1-loss B1G Champion.  
• #6 in 2018 as a 1-loss B1G Champion.  
• #2 in 2019 as an undefeated B1G Champion.  
• #3 in 2020 as an undefeated B1G Champion.  

So in the seven years of the CFP the Buckeyes have finished undefeated twice and with one loss five times.  That has resulted in four CFP appearances and three near-misses.  The Buckeyes have been:

• Included as an undefeated B1G Champion twice.  
• Included as a 1-loss B1G Champion once.  
• Excluded as a 1-loss B1G Champion twice.  
• Included as a 1-loss non-Champion once.  
• Excluded as a 1-loss non-Champion once.  

People act like the Buckeyes get some massive favoritism that gets them a spot automatically but they've only made the CFP 40% of the time when they had one loss.  

I definitely think that a 2-loss P5 Champion will be deserving eventually but we haven't seen it yet.  It might not happen until we have a crazy year where everybody loses and the CFP committee has no choice but to take a 2-loss team.  

And just to clarify, my stance here isn't to exclude ASU because they are ASU it is to exclude them because they scheduled an OOC so ridiculously bad that their overall SoS is even worse than some G5 schools.  

They are in first place! But you could pick any of these teams. Wake Forest plays a bit tougher schedule, and is also undefeated. Do they really deserve it over Cincinnati solely because of that, even if Cincy is much more impressive in their games?

The problem is that Cincy hasn't been "much more impressive" in their games.  They have:

• A 35 point win over a bad MAC school, Miami, OH:  Good win but nothing to write home about for a NC contender.  
• A 35 point win over an FCS school, Murray State:  I don't care if you beat an FCS team, particularly a BAD FCS team like Murray State by 150 points it is still just a win over an FCS school and I'm not impressed.  
• A 14 point win over IU:  I covered this at length above but this is clearly NOT impressive for an NC contender.  Legitimate power teams that have played IU did MUCH better even before the injury to IU's QB.  
• A 9 point win over ND:  Ok, I guess this is their big impressive win and it came against a team that barely beat FSU, Toledo, and VaTech.  
• A 49 point win over Temple:  For comparison, Rutgers beat Temple by 47.  Like the win over Miami, OH it is good but nothing to hang your hat on.  
• A 35 point win over UCF:  I actually think this one is probably more impressive than their win over ND.  The 56 points that UC scored is the most given up by UCF all year and the 21 given up to UCF was within a point of the fewest scored by UCF all year.  
• A 7 point win over Navy:  This is NOT impressive at all.  These are not Roger Staubach's Midshipmen.  Navy is 1-6 with a 42 point loss to Marhsall, a 20 point loss to Air Force, an 18 point loss to Memphis, an 8 point loss to Houston, and a seven point loss to SMU.  If Ohio State had beaten Navy by only a TD they'd have dropped in the polls and SportsCenter would have devoted entire segments to "what is wrong with the Buckeyes".  If UC is going to be treated like a legitimate NC contender then that should apply across the board and they should have dropped from #2 to at least #4 for this unimpressive win then had "what is wrong with Cincy" as a major discussion topic of the week.  Instead they seem to be given a pass because they are "just Cincy".  Like I said upthread it should be one or the other.  Either they are a NC contender or they aren't.  If they are then dock them for the close win over Navy like you would any other NC contender or they aren't in which case they shouldn't be taking a spot from a legitimate team in the top-10.  

I'm saying that if we have three undefeated or 1-loss conference champions, no other 1-loss teams, and a 2-loss B1G champ OSU and a 2-loss PAC champ Arizona State, no matter what the actual scores of any of the games are, OSU will get the benefit of the doubt 100% of the time, and Arizona State 0% of the time. Because we all "know" that Ohio State is better.

You'll give some teams a mulligan, but others will never get the same treatment. Because of a big shiny helmet.

See history:

This sounds like you are assuming that a 2-loss conference champion OSU would actually make it but lets look at tOSU's rankings each year of the CFP:

• #4 in 2014 as a 1-loss B1G Champion. 
• #7 in 2015 as a 1-loss non-Champion*. 
• #3 in 2016 as a 1-loss non-Champion*. 
• #5 in 2017 as a 1-loss B1G Champion. 
• #6 in 2018 as a 1-loss B1G Champion. 
• #2 in 2019 as an undefeated B1G Champion. 
• #3 in 2020 as an undefeated B1G Champion. 

So in the seven years of the CFP the Buckeyes have finished undefeated twice and with one loss five times.  That has resulted in four CFP appearances and three near-misses.  The Buckeyes have been:

• Included as an undefeated B1G Champion twice. 
• Included as a 1-loss B1G Champion once. 
• Excluded as a 1-loss B1G Champion twice. 
• Included as a 1-loss non-Champion once. 
• Excluded as a 1-loss non-Champion once. 

People act like the Buckeyes get some massive favoritism that gets them a spot automatically but they've only made the CFP 40% of the time when they had one loss. 

I definitely think that a 2-loss P5 Champion will be deserving eventually but we haven't seen it yet.  It might not happen until we have a crazy year where everybody loses and the CFP committee has no choice but to take a 2-loss team. 

And just to clarify, my stance here isn't to exclude ASU because they are ASU it is to exclude them because they scheduled an OOC so ridiculously bad that their overall SoS is even worse than some G5 schools. 

When is Ohio State going to start getting all these free passes and mulligans?  

And my point is that if that 2-loss team is OSU or Alabama, and everyone else loses, they'll be picked over say an undefeated G5 Cincinnati, or an undefeated G5 UCF in their prime, or an undefeated G5 Boise State in their prime.

It'll always be "but if the G5 did this", or "but if the G5 did that", we'd totally let them in. But it doesn't happen. It won't happen.

Because there is a G5 glass ceiling.

I agree with @FearlessF :

unless the undefeated G5 team scheduled all four non-cons from the P5 including a couple that ere ranked at the end of the season

And I'll add this:

What I think the G5 should do is create a scheduling alliance where one or preferably two of their OOC games are reserved to the end of the season then scheduled against comparable G5 teams.  That way the high-end G5 teams could add an SOS boosting game because the practical problem of scheduling is that most of it is done years in advance.  When Cincy made their OOC schedule of Miami, OH, MurraySt, Indiana, and Notre Dame their AD probably wasn't think about the CFP at all.  He was probably trying to make some money and keep the chances of bowl eligibility reasonably high.  Thus, he scheduled Miami, OH and MurraySt which he figured would be two easy wins.  Then he scheduled IU which he probably figured was a weak enough B1G team that the Bearcats might have a chance at knocking them off and Notre Dame for money/exposure.  

Fast forward from years or a decade ago when the schedule was made to 2021 and all of a sudden the Bearcats are preseason top-10 and they REALLY need a better schedule to prove that they belong but it is too late they are stuck with MiamiOH and MurraySt and now they really have no way to make up for looking pretty lackluster against IU and Navy.  

unless the undefeated G5 team scheduled all four non-cons from the P5 including a couple that ere ranked at the end of the season

Yeah, I can see it now... "Well they beat then #15 Florida who finished unranked, and they beat unranked Indiana, and they beat Virginia Tech and Kentucky, but they finished the season at #21 and #24. Maybe they should schedule a few better teams than that, but those rankings aren't good enough compared to Alabama who beat 4 top 20 teams and only lost to #1 UGA and #10 OU out of conference."

What I think the G5 should do is create a scheduling alliance where one or preferably two of their OOC games are reserved to the end of the season then scheduled against comparable G5 teams.  That way the high-end G5 teams could add an SOS boosting game because the practical problem of scheduling is that most of it is done years in advance.  When Cincy made their OOC schedule of Miami, OH, MurraySt, Indiana, and Notre Dame their AD probably wasn't think about the CFP at all.  He was probably trying to make some money and keep the chances of bowl eligibility reasonably high.  Thus, he scheduled Miami, OH and MurraySt which he figured would be two easy wins.  Then he scheduled IU which he probably figured was a weak enough B1G team that the Bearcats might have a chance at knocking them off and Notre Dame for money/exposure. 

Fast forward from years or a decade ago when the schedule was made to 2021 and all of a sudden the Bearcats are preseason top-10 and they REALLY need a better schedule to prove that they belong but it is too late they are stuck with MiamiOH and MurraySt and now they really have no way to make up for looking pretty lackluster against IU and Navy. 

That's the problem. Schedules made MANY years in advance, so a team like Cincinnati can either schedule 4 P5 teams and have scheduled 4 losses before the season starts, or they can make a mixed schedule that has wins and a tough team or two. 

Honestly I think this idea, though, is something that should be done for ALL of college football, not just G5. It was an idea a coworker (Boise State fan who knew the glass ceiling existed) came up with. Last two weeks of the regular season are out of your control. You get one home game and one away OOC game, chosen by someone [the CFP committee?] to match up top teams with top teams. 

If you really think G5 can't compete (as I do), then they'll play themselves out of contention over those two weeks. See what Cincinnati does playing two high-profile P5 teams. If they really think they can contend, well then it gives them the chance to prove it on the field. 

This idea, of course, was back in the BCS era where you were trying to select two teams, not four. But either way, it separates the pretenders from the contenders.