If college football wants to change one things next year to make this a more equal playing field, it would be very easy to do. All Power-5 conferences should have to play the same amount of conference games. 

I’m about to show you evidence that explains why Ohio St could have made it into the playoff last year and this year if we had the same set up as Bama and Clemson. It simply comes down to the amount of conference games the Big10 plays (9) compared to the SEC and ACC (8). Ohio St plays 6 conference games against the teams in the East and 3 cross over games against teams in the West for a total of 9 games. If we had the luxury of only playing 8 conference games and instead of scheduling that extra cross over conference game, we scheduled an FCS school just like all the SEC and Clemson does, this would drastically change the outcome of our season. If you look at it, one less cross over conference game could have been the difference in us not playing Iowa last year or Purdue this year. With one less loss last year there would have been no debate that we would have been in over Bama, same amount of losses and us being the conference champ. This year we could be potentially undefeated going into the Big10 Championship game and easily in the top 4 right now.

If you flip the script and make the SEC follow suit in what the Big10 does, this could also drastically change the season for teams like Bama and Georgia. This could be the difference in Bama and Georgia playing one more cross over game last year and this year and if that game was against each other that pretty much guarantees both those teams don’t get in last year and both wouldn’t get in this year. Just something to think about.

(Mod Edit: moved to the College Sports Forum.)