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Meanwhile, 16 seeds are 0-120 or whatever in the tournament.  Fairness is brought up - is rewarding someone's season with a very public curb-stomping fair?  Is virtually guaranteeing their great season end with a blowout loss fair?

Meanwhile, 16 seeds are 0-120 or whatever in the tournament.  Fairness is brought up - is rewarding someone's season with a very public curb-stomping fair?  Is virtually guaranteeing their great season end with a blowout loss fair?

This is a great point IMHO.  
Another issue that I have with the BB comparison is that with a 64 team field every major conference team with an even remotely plausible argument and a bunch without a plausible argument gets in.  My team (like every major conference team) has been left out multiple times in favor of obviously inferior conference champions from crappy conferences but when that happened my team wasn't very good so I didn't care.  If you go to 12 teams with 10 auto-bids the 3rd best P5 non-Champion is going to be left out.  This year that would have been (per CFP ranking) Auburn.  Other P5 teams left out would have been PSU, Miami, and Washington.  Those four teams were obviously better than most of the G5 Champions so letting in the G5 champions while keeping them out is ridiculous.  

Except that those late season G5 games wouldn't be relevant anyway because all they would determine is which crappy G5 Champion got slaughtered by which P5 Champion.  Who cares?  Do you really care which crappy team Dook is up 40 on in the first round of the NCAA?  

Yes.
I soak up those two weeks of mid-major conference tournaments.  I'll watch random quarterfinal games online.
I didn't watch a minute of any of the Group of 5 CCGs other than UCF, because they were totally irrelevant.

To me, it's not national title or bust (which I'll elaborate on later, but don't have time now).  I just want meaningful football.  A CCG to determine who gets slaughtered by Clemson is still a hell of a lot more relevant than a CCG to determine a conference title, that doesn't really mean anything

I wanted to respond to this as well.  I think if you went to the homer boards you would see a lot of tOSU fans "crying about fairness", but you see very little of it here.  
For myself, I understand it.  If I were on the committee I'd have had a hard time deciding between Ohio State and Alabama.  For the Buckeyes, I liked their SoS, their P5 title, and their wins over PSU, MSU, and UW but two losses are a problem and the fact that neither was particularly close and one was by 31 points to a mediocre team is problematic.  For the Tide I like their record (only one loss) but their SoS and lack of any title were problems.  I'm fine with the decision.  
My big gripe is that the committee publicly made an obviously false statement a week before the final rankings came out.  I can't figure out why they would do that and it bothers me.  

4 loss Auburn is not a top 10 team.

Agreed. Granted according to the committee, 3-loss Auburn was ranked a top-10 team. At the time of determination of the CFP field we can't look ahead to see that Auburn was going to lose to UCF. 

Now, was 2-loss Auburn a legitimate #2 according to the CFP committee before the SECCG? That's an interesting debate, but one I don't think it's useful to any of us to get into lol...

bwarb, one nitpick:  Bama didn't beat a "terrible 6-6 FSU team" - they beat a full-strength with their QB #3 FSU at the time.  Yes, final ranking is more accurate than ranking at the time, but in this case, FSU crumbled bc their backup QB was a 3* true FR.

So yes, Bama scheduled tough OOC as well as OSU did.

If I'm wrong on that one, OK. I don't know how much of FSU's 6-6 finish was due to them not being as good as they were hyped to be vs injury problems. But even with a 2nd string QB taking snaps, there should be enough talent on that team to not finish 6-6. I think they very well might have been highly overrated on opening night.

I was opposed to the expansion of the playoff from two to four teams and I oppose an expansion to six or eight for the same reason:  Every expansion of the playoff necessarily dilutes the regular season to at least some extent.  The expansion to four made it nearly impossible for a 1-loss team to miss the playoffs.  An expansion to eight (with auto-bids for the P5) would make OOC games meaningless and non-divisional games only marginally meaningful.  

I believe that the 4-team playoff actually diminishes the value of winning your conference. The committee says it should carry a lot of weight but in both 2016 and 2017 they took non-champs over conference champs. Heck, 2016 Penn State beat eventual CFP participant OSU head to head, but because of a week 2 loss to Pitt ended up not making it into the CFP. 

It seems that what matters to the CFP committee is whatever they feel like mattering each year. 

An expansion to 8 makes the conference championships meaningful. And if you don't win your conference, I would think OOC games would matter quite a bit to getting your at-large bid. 

But no, OSU fans are crying out about fairness this year....with 2 losses.

As the OP, I should point out that I decry the lack of fairness in the system and I am NOT an OSU fan. 

I just can't stand the inconsistency in what the CFP committee does, which appears to be whatever the heck they want whenever they want, changing what supposedly carries weight. 

To me, it's not national title or bust (which I'll elaborate on later, but don't have time now).  I just want meaningful football.  A CCG to determine who gets slaughtered by Clemson is still a hell of a lot more relevant than a CCG to determine a conference title, that doesn't really mean anything

Well, the simple fact is that the G5 teams don't really mean anything. They never will. The P5 haven't yet made a move to break off from them, but they certainly make sure that the G5 will never get a seat at the table and do everything they can to keep them out of the power structure.

I believe that the 4-team playoff actually diminishes the value of winning your conference. The committee says it should carry a lot of weight but in both 2016 and 2017 they took non-champs over conference champs. Heck, 2016 Penn State beat eventual CFP participant OSU head to head, but because of a week 2 loss to Pitt ended up not making it into the CFP.

I disagree.  It wasn't the expansion to four teams that diminished the value of winning your conference.  In the BCS era neither 2017 11-1 non-champion Bama nor 2016 11-1 non-champion Ohio State would have even been seriously discussed.  
I think the whole season should matter.  I actually like that the current 4-team format inherently excludes at least one of the P5 Champions because that effectively eliminates guaranteed mulligans.  As it turned out, Bama's game against Auburn was meaningless but nobody knew that going in and Nick Saban would never have considered resting his starters.  
Wisconsin clinched their spot in the B1GCG BEFORE the Michigan game.  If Champions got auto-bids then there would have been an argument for the Badgers to rest their starters during the Michigan game.  With the knowledge that at least one P5 Champion will be excluded that isn't even discussed.  
I've said it pretty much since they expanded the playoff to four teams but the next expansion is inevitable and it will be to an 8-team playoff with auto-bids for the P5 Champions and the highest ranked G5 Champion and two at-large slots.  

I disagree.  It wasn't the expansion to four teams that diminished the value of winning your conference.  In the BCS era neither 2017 11-1 non-champion Bama nor 2016 11-1 non-champion Ohio State would have even been seriously discussed.  

That is true. In the BCS era, because you had 6 power conference champions, you basically never had a scenario where a non-champion would have EVER been selected over a champion. That's just loony talk!

Well, except in the 2011 season where Alabama faced LSU. And almost the 2006 season where we debated an OSU/UM rematch.

There's no way that a non-champ would be seriously discussed!

Wisconsin clinched their spot in the B1GCG BEFORE the Michigan game.  If Champions got auto-bids then there would have been an argument for the Badgers to rest their starters during the Michigan game.  With the knowledge that at least one P5 Champion will be excluded that isn't even discussed.  

Except that this isn't the NFL. If Wisconsin had rested their starters and lost to Michigan, and then lost to Ohio State, there's no way they'd secure an at-large. But if they had beaten Michigan and lost to Ohio State, they probably would have gotten an at-large berth this year. 

Getting into your CCG isn't getting into the playoff. There's no point to rest your starters unless you are guaranteed to win your CCG, which is hardly ever a guarantee.