[BostonCard]

No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

Had UNC beaten Clemson, the Notre Dame game would have taken us to the playoffs with two losses over a 1-loss North Carolina team.

While Alabama had 4 non-conference games, and only one of those against a real opponent (Wisconsin), it is still objectively a pretty tough schedule (see, for example, Sagarin).  They had 9 games against Sagarin top-30 teams; we only had 6 such games prior to the bowl season.  No other top-10 team played more than 6 games against top-30 opponents.

BC

[BostonCard]

No, there's no value for our playoff aspirations. What value did it give us this year? If we had beaten Oregon, it wouldn't matter if we had played ND or UC Davis, we would've been in the playoff with a win. (Well, and a win the next week.) This idea that the conference values hard schedules was exposed as a complete load of horseshit this year. If the committee valued hard schedules we would've been in, we weren't so they don't. Until proven otherwise scheduling like Alabama is the way to go.

Had UNC beaten Clemson, the Notre Dame game would have taken us to the playoffs with two losses over a 1-loss North Carolina team.

While Alabama had 4 non-conference games, and only one of those against a real opponent (Wisconsin), it is still objectively a pretty tough schedule (see, for example, Sagarin).  They had 9 games against Sagarin top-30 teams; we only had 6 such games prior to the bowl season.  No other top-10 team played more than 6 games against top-30 opponents.

BC