Big Ten commish Jim Delany makes Ohio State’s College Football Playoff argument (in case it’s needed)

The Ohio State Buckeyes are leading the Wisconsin Badgers during the Big Ten Championship game, and Saturday night’s game has serious College Football Playoff implications. If the undefeated Badgers win, they will be in with nothing holding them back. But if OSU wins, then it gets a whole lot trickier.

The Buckeyes’ two losses — 31-16 to Oklahoma and 55-24 blowout loss to a 7-5 Iowa — are a big problem for them, especially with one-loss Alabama still in the picture. But in a recent interview, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany laid out his main argument for OSU getting into the Playoff, if it beats Wisconsin: playing nine conference games during the regular season and having no FCS games on its schedule.

“You could look at it as Ohio State’s [10th] (conference) game,” Delany said of the conference title game, via the Chicago Tribune. “They could have played an FCS opponent, just like Penn State could have played an FCS opponent instead of Pitt last season. Whenever you go challenge yourself, over time, you won’t win as many as when you don’t challenge yourselves.”

He added that conference championships, and strength of schedule, both things that the committee looks at when evaluating teams, should work in the Big Ten’s favor.

“We had the most FBS wins; we had the fewest FCS games,” Delany added via the newspaper. “We challenged ourselves in every way. I think our efforts to play more conference games, to schedule up to a reasonable degree, to reduce the number of mismatches should serve us well.”

While the case can certainly be made for an OSU team to make it into the Playoff, as Jason Kirk pointed out, the Bucks’ resume isn’t as strong as it looks on paper when you break it down:

If the Buckeyes make it in:

-The first two-loss CFP team (or second, if Auburn’s in) has two top-10 wins, sure, but two-loss Auburn had that many before conference title weekend.

-Going 5-2 against bowl teams is easily the worst mark of any Playoff team ever. The previous worst: 2016 No. 4 Washington’s 6-1. The average for a CFP team through three years was 7-1.

-The Buckeyes have already lost by 15 points to another contender, the most decisive loss ever suffered by a CFP team, if not for ...

-... their 31-point loss to 7-5 Iowa, comfortably the ugliest loss ever suffered by a CFP team.

On the flipside, Alabama’s resume looks pretty similar to a potentially undefeated conference champ Wisconsin, minus “potentially undefeated” and “conference champ.” The Tide went either 3-1 or 2-1 against ranked teams, depending on whether Fresno State wins the Mountain West, and had seven .500-plus wins, but zero top-10 wins. Just like Ohio State, Bama also had just lots of blowouts of mediocre teams... albeit without losing at home, losing to an unranked team, losing by more than two scores, or doing all three, as Ohio State did.

We’ll see how it all shakes out, but you can bet there will be unhappy folks no matter who gets left out, as these things go.