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

That's even worse.

What I hear around here is that people want individual games to matter. They want the regular season to matter. [Some of them] want conference championships to matter.

Going to 8 without any auto-bids tears all of that down, and all you get in return is some more money for the TV networks.

If you have 8, a conference championship doesn't matter. With 4, the committee has proven that it doesn't mean everything, but it still means something, in the selection process. You have to be special to get in without a conference championship.

If you have 8, you'll be getting teams with multiple mulligans. You'll get a 10-2 SEC team that didn't even qualify for its championship game, that has won nothing of note, that has earned nothing.

If you have 8, you'll have even more teams "scheduling wins" OOC than they currently do, because a team will KNOW that being 11-1 and not going to their conference championship game is enough. Ohio State couldn't survive a pasting by Purdue in 2018. They would with 8 teams.

The ONLY point of going to 8 (or 12) is to allow auto-bids. That's the only reason I'm in favor of it, actually, because then P5 conference championships are always meaningful. If you're not going to go auto-bids, might as well stay at 4.

I find winning a conference or conference championship to be a poor indicator of whether a team is actually one of the best teams in the nation.  Anyone really that impressed when Clemson runs the table in the ACC year after year?  Oklahoma owns the Big 12.

Schedule strength varies from team to team and conference strength varies from conference to conference.  Automatic bids just set arbitrary rules that ultimately end up weakening the playing field of teams that receive a playoff spot.

You're advocating to weaken the playoffs to preserve the importance of conference champions, but that just makes it easier for Bama, Clemson and OSU to dominate the playoffs in the end.

Sure, whatever. The problem you have is you have no actual system to ensure the best teams are in. You have a lot of fancystats and computer comparisons and hypotheticals and poindexters. My way has results on the field. Which is fairer? Is it the system where every team gets a chance to prove they are the best by playing the game of football, or is it the system where teams play and then we run it through a bunch of algorithms and "eye tests" to decide who was actually best. I know which I think is better. Plus my way makes more games way more meaningful, meaning it's a lot more fun, to boot.

As I showed above, the MAC Champion two years ago lost to Ohio State by 71 freaking points.  You act like @OrangeAfroMan and I are the only ones who think that the tallest midgets can't compete.  We aren't.  Everyone with eyes can see that they can't compete.  In 2019 8-5 MAC Champion MiamiOH lost to Ohio State by 71, Iowa by 24, and Cincy by 22.  In your ridiculous system Iowa and Cincy would be out because they play in better leagues than MiamiOH but we'd get to see Georgia beat the snot out of MiamiOH in a joke of a first round game.  Your first round games would be:

• #5 UGA vs #12 MiamiOH:  Georgia would be favored by 40+
• #6 Oregon vs #11 FAU:  Oregon would be favored by 20+
• #7 Baylor vs #10 ApSt:  This might actually be close but that says more about Baylor and the B12 than it does about ApSt and the SBelt.  It is irrelevant because the winner would get tOSU where they'd be a 20+ point dog.  
• #8 Memphis vs #9 BoiseSt:  This would actually be a pretty good game but also a complete waste of time since the winner would be absolute cannon fodder for #1 LSU in the second round.  

Why should MiamiOH be included while two teams that completely thumped them are excluded.  Didn't you say that results on the field should matter?  

I'm not sure how much it promotes better OOC matchups, but I want the reg season to mean something and a conference championship to be of value

Hayden Fry, then Bill Snyder learned to "never" schedule a loss

of course neither of them won too many conference titles

Medina, I respect you greatly, but with this sport and especially with the particular outlook you have on the sport, there will be no fairness. That's how it ends.

If half the sport can't have a chance of competing on day one, there's no need to talk about fairness at all. None. And that's fine. It's unfair to the core. Nature of the beast.

Of course the sport isn't fair. 

In the NFL the worst teams get the earliest draft picks and the best teams get the latest draft picks which at least helps to level the playing field eventually.  

In CFB the players get to choose where to play and even before the NIL issue the great players generally wanted to play for great programs which contributed to a 'rich-get-richer' system.  Now with NIL the great players have not only the desire to win to motivate them to go to the best programs but they also have a serious financial incentive.  If you are a great QB and you go to Rutgers and get them to 6-6 you'll maybe get some NIL money in the NJ area but if you go to tOSU and get them a NC you'll be a nationally known and nationally marketable celebrity worth millions.  

There is no practical way to square this circle.  The sport is always going to be uneven.  

IMHO, the CFP and accompanying "nationalization" of the sport along with the NIL change have accelerated this in ways that were not really expected.  High-end recruits today have more motivation than ever to pick one of the VERY few programs that are consistently nationally competitive (basically Bama, Clemson, tOSU, OU, UGA and maybe LSU and Oregon).  

Those seven schools have 23 out of 28 CFP appearances (the other five are ND2x, FSU, MSU, Washington), 14 out of 14 CFP semi-final wins (Bama5x, Clemson4x, tOSU2x, LSU, UGA, Ore), and all seven CFP Championships (Bama3x, Clemson2x, tOSU, LSU).  Nobody else is even remotely close to that.  The other four teams that have been to the CFP are a combined 0-5 with five blowout losses in the semi-finals:

• FSU by 39 in 2014
• MSU by 38 in 2015
• Notre Dame by 27 in 2018
• Washington by 17 in 2016
• Notre Dame by 17 in 2020

Even the 17 point losses by Washington-16 and Notre Dame-20 didn't actually feel that close.  

Those seven have some semi-final losses to, even some bad ones:

• Bama lost a semi-final to tOSU in 2014, 42-35:  7 points
• tOSU lost a semi-final to Clemson in 2016, 31-0:  31 points
• Clemson lost a semi-final to Bama in 2017, 24-6:  18 points
• tOSU lost a semi-final to Clemson in 2019, 29-23:  6 points
• Clemson lost a semi-final to tOSU in 2020, 49-28:  21 points

The 18, 21, and 31 point losses were as bad as some of those losses by other teams but remember that these teams have offsetting semi-final and CG wins.  Those other teams don't.  

Of course the sport isn't fair. 

In the NFL the worst teams get the earliest draft picks and the best teams get the latest draft picks which at least helps to level the playing field eventually. 

In CFB the players get to choose where to play and even before the NIL issue the great players generally wanted to play for great programs which contributed to a 'rich-get-richer' system.  Now with NIL the great players have not only the desire to win to motivate them to go to the best programs but they also have a serious financial incentive.  If you are a great QB and you go to Rutgers and get them to 6-6 you'll maybe get some NIL money in the NJ area but if you go to tOSU and get them a NC you'll be a nationally known and nationally marketable celebrity worth millions. 

There is no practical way to square this circle.  The sport is always going to be uneven. 

IMHO, the CFP and accompanying "nationalization" of the sport along with the NIL change have accelerated this in ways that were not really expected.  High-end recruits today have more motivation than ever to pick one of the VERY few programs that are consistently nationally competitive (basically Bama, Clemson, tOSU, OU, UGA and maybe LSU and Oregon). 

Those seven schools have 23 out of 28 CFP appearances (the other five are ND2x, FSU, MSU, Washington), 14 out of 14 CFP semi-final wins (Bama5x, Clemson4x, tOSU2x, LSU, UGA, Ore), and all seven CFP Championships (Bama3x, Clemson2x, tOSU, LSU).  Nobody else is even remotely close to that.  The other four teams that have been to the CFP are a combined 0-5 with five blowout losses in the semi-finals:

• FSU by 39 in 2014
• MSU by 38 in 2015
• Notre Dame by 27 in 2018
• Washington by 17 in 2016
• Notre Dame by 17 in 2020

Even the 17 point losses by Washington-16 and Notre Dame-20 didn't actually feel that close. 

Those seven have some semi-final losses to, even some bad ones:

• Bama lost a semi-final to tOSU in 2014, 42-35:  7 points
• tOSU lost a semi-final to Clemson in 2016, 31-0:  31 points
• Clemson lost a semi-final to Bama in 2017, 24-6:  18 points
• tOSU lost a semi-final to Clemson in 2019, 29-23:  6 points
• Clemson lost a semi-final to tOSU in 2020, 49-28:  21 points

The 18, 21, and 31 point losses were as bad as some of those losses by other teams but remember that these teams have offsetting semi-final and CG wins.  Those other teams don't. 

Good. So we agree it matters not at all if it’s “unfair” that a perfectly good Wisconsin team is left out of a playoff, even if a worse team is let in. 

Got is some agreement there.

Right now OOC SOS matters for P5 schools, but it matters FAR less than avoiding OOC losses. Because you already have decent SOS in-conference.

Does it? 

Like, has any team in the playoff era really been punished for it or rewarded for it? Like, you just line up the P5 teams by losses and conference titles, and that makes most of, if not all the difference.