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

What's usually lost in these conversations is that Football is the mother's milk of college athletics.  While fans cry at the "greed" of AD's and college presidents because they are seeking to maximize the money brought in, the money goes to fund athletic programs and pay for athlete's education.  A lot of people fail to admit how important the money is and cry "greed" when all they are interested in is being entertained more to their liking.  I don't blame the power that be for not wanting to rock the boat just because a lot of the people who they they are pure in heart really just are selfish in their desire for better entertainment.

Good to see you here pal. And I agree entirely with your post. Happy New Year.

Single-elimination playoffs are generally bad ways to crown champions, if what you are after is "the best." A multi-game series is better, but a balanced and long regular season is the true best. The EPL system: play everyone home and away, the team with the best record at the end is champion, is probably the best way to decide the best team in any given season (though that wouldn't work very well for a sport like baseball that has a huge rotation of pitchers). Single elimination simply proves who was best that day (and often the difference is minute); a playoff series tells you who is best of the remaining teams, but not who was the best over the course of the season. 

Meh. Don't really care. I think given the existence of the playoff system, I would favor an 8-team version, to allow for conference champions and three stragglers who have some legitimate complaint about not being a conference champion. 

That said, there's little doubt that the playoff has diminished the major bowls, which is too bad for this tradition-loving guy.

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.

Right, I'm not saying what WILL happen

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

To elaborate...
I think in expanding the postseason, they've grossly diminished the regular season, and not because there's more room for error in remaining in the top 4 vs. the top 2.
At least in my opinion, when only 2 got in, it was such an elite tier, that sole focus on reaching the championship game was too narrow to elicit the type of coverage the CFP gets now.  The National Title was obviously the most important, but you lost too much audience focusing on it, that conference titles and bowl bids still remained important.  You weren't in the national title hunt?  Cool, you have a big conference title to go after.  There were only 4 BCS bowls, so simply getting to one was also a big deal.
Going from 2 to 4 has only mildly expanded that group, but somehow it's enough that they now feel ok covering only that CFP race.  Yet I believe Michigan State in 2015 was the only team to be ranked lower than #7 with 3 weeks to go, and still get in.  So really, we have said, with 1/4 of the season to go, all but 7 teams are irrelevant.  The entire Group of 5 is irrelevant from kickoff.  The committee has also made clear that 2 losses, no matter to who, no matter what you subsequently win, is also fatal.  So 3/4 of the FBS was irrelevant by the first game in October.  College football has the best regular season?  It has the highest stakes regular season to be sure, but with the singular focus on the CFP, it is now the only regular season that has rendered 75% of it's participants totally irrelevant by the start of the 2nd month of the season, and about 95% totally irrelevant with 1/4 of the season to play.  Being in a NY6 bowl?  Whoopee!  I think the 4th place team in the Big Ten played in one last year.  There is only played on like December 28.
So I've moved beyond the "greatest regular season" part, it's a farce.  People love to discuss how there are too many bowl games, and they are all just exhibitions.  I fail to see how they are any less of an exhibition than an early November game between #14 and #19.  There is no rhyme or reason to bowl selection, and the threshold for getting eligible is laughably low.  So those two teams aren't playing for bowl eligibility (which is just another exhibition anyway); they aren't playing for bowl positioning (which is totally random to create tv matchups); and they aren't playing for the only thing that matters, the CFP.  At best, depending on their division, they may still be in the race to reach their CCG, but from that spot, all they can do there is give themselves a NY6 bowl, just like what UCF was playing for this year.
So I'm over pretending how great the regular season is.  And I'm past trying to concern myself whether the "best" team in the national champion.  Give me as much meaningful football as possible.  A 12 team, 10 auto-bid playoff I think does that.  You would have had the same teams as we had anyway, plus Auburn and 7 conference champs.  You would have made all 10 conference races meaningful to the very end, adding dozens of meaningful games, and the only game you probably would have diminished is the SEC Championship Game, which still would have had some seeding impact.

Badgers as a one loss Big Ten champ with victory over the Buckeyes in Indy.  Do they get in over Bama?

Yes, even with the 31 point loss to the Hawks

it would have been close, but I think they get the nod over Bama

I could be wrong

disagree.. 1 loss bama gets in over a 1 loss big champ named Wisconsin.
Bama is in with 1 or less losses regardless.  That's how it has been for years. 

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!
I mean THIS year it wouldn't have been.  In those years you had relatively weak champions from most of the leagues.  This year you didn't.  The B1G and PAC had relatively weak (2-loss) champions but the SEC, ACC, and B12 each produced 1-loss champions.  

In 2011 you had 11-1 Oklahoma State and 11-1 Stanford, who were edged out by 11-1 non-champ Alabama. 
You can make a claim that Alabama (having only lost to an undefeated LSU team) was the 2nd-best team in the nation. But I'm not sure you can argue that OkSU or Stanford were necessarily "weak" unless by strength/weakness you're comparing the shine of their helmet. They weren't 2-loss champs like PSU in 2016 and OSU or USC in 2017. They were 1-loss conference champs. Shouldn't that mean something? 
Either way, however, the BCS was essentially a mathematical formula. It was the polls and the computer rankings. The human polls differ from the committee in that the individual human voters are independent and don't collectively agree on who the representatives in the title game should be. 
The committee does, however. And the committee has several stated rationales as far as what should carry weight. 2016 PSU lost in weeks 2 and 4, and then basically rolled roughshod through the rest of the season, but were passed over for a team they beat head to head. And I don't want to argue from results, but that team got completely decimated by Clemson in the semis. 2017 OSU did what they were supposed to do (schedule tough and win their conference) and had a pretty good resume, beating two teams that finished in the top 10, but based on losing to a team that finished 2nd in the standings and having one "WTF?" game were jumped by a non-champion who didn't schedule particularly tough and didn't really have any "signature wins". 
I think you can easily argue the 2016 PSU team was tough, and and beat the one-loss non-champ that was selected over them head to head. I think you can easily argue the 2017 OSU team was tough, had some great wins, and 9 times out of 10 beats that Iowa team to a pulp. Is their resume truly worse than an Alabama team with no signature wins that lost to a 10-3 Auburn team?

10-4 Auburn team...

Yes, now. My point was at the time the CFP rankings were released, they were a 10-3 Auburn team. That was the known record at the time the committee was evaluating Alabama's resume.