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

• #8 UCF in 2018
• #12 UCF in 2017
• #15 WMU in 2016
• #17 Memphis in 2019
• #18 Houston in 2015
• #20 BoiseSt in 2014

So, it's going to be rare to have a G5 anywhere but 12 playing 5.  So, 5 gets a kind of "tune up game".  Advantage or not?

Well, lets look at it this way.  Suppose that yours and my school are the contenders for #4/5.  Ie, suppose that Bama, Clemson, and Oklahoma are 13-0 Champions of the SEC, ACC, and B12 respectively while tOSU and UGA are both 12-1 and everybody else has at least two losses.  Georgia's loss would obviously be to #1 Bama and lets assume for the sake of discussion that tOSU's is NOT to Clemson or Oklahoma so Georgia has an obviously better loss.  However, lets say that SoS is relatively equal, that tOSU's loss isn't THAT bad, and that tOSU is B1G Champion.  

Whoever "wins" this debate gets the following path to the NC:

• Bye in mid-December
• Quarterfinal against the winner of the game between the "loser" of this debate and the G5 Champion in a bowl on NYD
• Bama (or theoretically the #8/9 winner) in mid-January
• The 2/3/6/7/10/11 winner in the NCG.  

Whoever "loses" this debate gets the following path to the NC:

• The G5 Champ in mid-December at home
• Quarterfinal against the "winner" of this debate in a bowl on NYD
• Bama (or theoretically the #8/9 winner) in mid-January
• The 2/3/6/7/10/11 winner in the NCG

So if it was between your school and mine, which would you prefer and which do you think is more advantageous and by how much?  

My answers:
As a fan I'd prefer to "lose" the debate strictly from a viewing perspective.  I'd get an extra game and it would be a home game that I just might be able to attend.  

I *THINK* that "winning" the debate is more advantageous but only slightly.  It reduces fatigue because you have three games to the NC instead of four but the tune-up game against a G5 Champ might actually help and that way the team would be less likely to show up rusty for the NYD game.  

I would lean to playing a tune up game before the 4-5 matchup.  Risk is obvious.

But then if you win round 2, you get to face 1, generally speaking.

You hafta beat'em eventually.

Imagine a 10 seed winning the NC.
Connected to that, I've always found it odd that we Americans love the underdog.  Cinderella during March Madness, Rocky Balboa, David & Goliath, etc......but as a country, WE are Goliath.  It's not bad....it's not a criticism....it's just odd to me. 
.
Everyone knows that 16-0 Pats team was the best of that season (and maybe ever), but we dwell on the big upset and David Tyree's legendary catch, etc....why does the world's only superpower country love underdogs so much?

Because back in 1776, we were the plucky underdog. 

It may be doubtful the 12-team CFP will last long enough for this, but my position is that we'll have to wait something like 10 years to REALLY get a handle on the answer to this question, maybe longer. 

There are anomalies in statistics and sometimes the outliers come in clusters.  If the G5's win their first two CFP first round games that MIGHT be indicative that they are as strong as some here are asserting and they'll keep that up and go at least 5-5 in first round games over 10 years or those two MIGHT just be the two outliers and after 10 years they'll be 2-8. 

Conversely, if the G5's get smoked in their first two CFP games, that MIGHT be indicative that they are as weak as @OrangeAfroMan and I are asserting and they'll keep that up and be lucky to go 1-9 in first round games over 10 years or those two MIGHT just be 40% of the losses that they'll sustain in 10 years and they'll end up 5-5 in the first 10 years of first round games. 

Ie, I'm saying that I will neither claim to have been proven right nor admit to having been proven wrong after the first two years of 12-team CFP's. 

Medina. My friend. You're one of the people that forces me to think through things in this place, and this post led me down an interesting rabbit hole that I'd not gamed out with the playoff. 

SO, my initial thought was, even if they went 2-8, that's maybe what we expect? Like, we'd assume they'd go worse than 5-5, maybe 3-7? Maybe worse? So I figured I'd sketch out the matchups and set lines using end of season SP+ (we can debate if using end of regular season would be better, but in theory, more games means a bigger picture).

And the takeaway was interesting.

See, the standard for 5 seed sort of shifts around. Some years you park an uninspiring UGA team there. Some it's that Iowa team that no one thought was THAT good but was like a yard from the playoff. Sometimes it's Bama. 

What's more, we don't really rank teams by how good they might be. We rank them by losses. So some years you might catch a hellacious 9-3 team at No. 12. (SP+ can have some quirks where power rating and record don't align, so I respect it's weird.)

So here's the year-by-year lines for that theoretical game (Not doing 2020 because it was dumb and weird). Using final year SP because it's just much easier to find. 
2019 - UGA by 9 vs Auburn (woulda been 11 vs UCF)
2018 - ND by 4 vs PSU (6.5 vs UCF, granted, ND was 13th in SP+)
2017 - Alabama by 22 vs UCF (Bama was Bama and SP didn't like UCF)
2016 - Ohio State by 9 vs OK State (OSU was 10th in SP, OK 14th, but a 6-point difference)
2015 - Iowa as a 13-point dog vs Ole Miss (SP did not like Iowa that year, really liked Ole Miss)
2014 - Baylor by 14.5 vs Ga. Tech 

The most intersting part is those 5s, all quirky in their way.
2019 UGA - That team where the offense cratered with Fromm. No one really liked the team, but they were parked at that spot because of a dearth of interesting 2-loss teams and SEC. Oregon probably should've been ahead of them, but it didn't count for much. 
2018 ND - Undefeated, uninspiring, sorry good UGA team
2017 Bama - we all thought might be the best, and ended up there
2016 - Of all four OSU team that started Barrett, probably the worst and hardest to watch
2015 Iowa - They were ... fine
2014 - Baylor. All things considered, this is where you'd put them. 

Basically, I wonder if they rankings of 5-12 get shaken up because you have more stakes in every seed. 

Skip to 2030, UGA plays both Clemson and Ohio State.  Say they lose close games and lose another close game to undefeated Florida, so they are 9-3.  Do they get slotted at 12 and still have a dangerous team?  Probably would be higher than that.

Undefeated or perhaps 12-1.  I just wonder if a three loss team would get dropped to 12 if the losses were close to top teams, and that team would still be quite good.

Maybe the theoretical Dawgs also beat LSU, Auburn, and Miss State who were all 10-2.