[stupac2]

To play devil's advocate, would all Power 5 champs getting in lessen the need for good OOC opponents?  If you know that winning your conference gets you in automatically, would you schedule cupcakes OOC to make sure none of your guys get injured?  Or would it conversely inspire you to get better OOC opponents, as they might give your team good experience and losing those games wouldn't hurt your conference title hunt?

Further, with the 8 team option, perhaps your OOC schedule would still matter if you want a wild-card, so you wouldn't ignore it completely.  Rather, the point at which it matters moves from getting you into the top-4 to getting you a wildcard.

I think that expanding the playoff would probably make for better OOC schedules, because:

1) Unlike now an OOC loss wouldn't completely eliminate your in-conference margin of error, since they'd be decoupled. So teams would no longer just do the bare minimum.
2) Aggressive scheduling could be rewarded through seeding.
3) Aggressive scheduling would make it more likely that, if you lose your conference, you get in as an at-large.

That said, there'd still be the same downside where aggressive scheduling likely means losing a home game, which teams in the south really don't want to give up.

[stupac2]

To play devil's advocate, would all Power 5 champs getting in lessen the need for good OOC opponents?  If you know that winning your conference gets you in automatically, would you schedule cupcakes OOC to make sure none of your guys get injured?  Or would it conversely inspire you to get better OOC opponents, as they might give your team good experience and losing those games wouldn't hurt your conference title hunt?

Further, with the 8 team option, perhaps your OOC schedule would still matter if you want a wild-card, so you wouldn't ignore it completely.  Rather, the point at which it matters moves from getting you into the top-4 to getting you a wildcard.

I think that expanding the playoff would probably make for better OOC schedules, because:

1) Unlike now an OOC loss wouldn't completely eliminate your in-conference margin of error, since they'd be decoupled. So teams would no longer just do the bare minimum.
2) Aggressive scheduling could be rewarded through seeding.
3) Aggressive scheduling would make it more likely that, if you lose your conference, you get in as an at-large.

That said, there'd still be the same downside where aggressive scheduling likely means losing a home game, which teams in the south really don't want to give up.