Like it or not, here comes the B1G

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There’s a part in the Bible about the wailing and gnashing of teeth. The first thought that comes to your mind usually is, “Someone must have foreseen Pitbull’s music career taking off.” It’s actually about getting into heaven, or rather, not. But come December, it will be the reaction when the Big Ten puts one team in the CFB Playoff … because it’s going to happen, and it’s going to be deserved.

That’s right, folks. Here comes the Big Ten, destination playoffs.

There’s something to be said for hanging around just long enough to get in the door, because once you’re in, anything can happen. It’s likely that Nov. 8 will be the game that decides which Big Ten team gets into the dance, but the sneaky reality of it is … there’s a backup plan regardless.

Right now, the B1G has three viable playoff contenders: Michigan State, Ohio State, and Nebraska. The only other one-loss team is Minnesota, and while in theory it’s possible … no.

Look, this is just being realistic here. What started off as an impossibility after the first few weeks of conference chaos has turned into the Big Ten’s elite sitting back in a lawn chair with a stein of brew, watching the rest of college football rip apart the pulchritude of one another week by week while the meat on the plate in the Midwest distances itself from the veggies on the plate and deals with how the dust will settle.

Scan the rest of the nation. Regardless of what the weekly national “playoff projections” will tell you, three teams from the SEC West aren’t getting in no matter how big or bad you might think they are. Allegedly, they’ll actually all play one another before too long, which guarantees losses.

The Big 12 and the Pac-12 are eating their own, with only Oregon and probably Arizona State as options out west and who knows on the plains. If West Virginia takes care of its business at home, odds are the Mountaineers win the conference with two losses and that effectively ends anyone else’s chances out there.

Florida State is Florida State, and Notre Dame shouldn’t be docked for its one loss at all, but there are four spots in play, and the onus is on the CFB Playoff committee to make this thing look passable, especially in Year One.

Stuffing the playoffs with multiple teams from the same conference should and likely will be avoided, because of the either realistic or effervescent “emphasis” on winning a conference championship.

Meanwhile, the upper crust of the Big Ten preys on the remainder of the league, and eventually you have to take notice. Mind you, the teams are good, too. How is Nebraska viewed as a one-loss team in the Big 12 rather than in the punch-line-a-minute-for-no-reason Big Ten?

Then you have Ohio State, losers to Virginia Tech, but in a playoff world, if you come back from that and shred everyone like a hatchet through low-hanging fruit, doesn’t that speak to improvement and worthiness? The Buckeyes are averaging 56 points per game on offense since the loss, and J.T. Barrett has become a real Heisman Trophy threat.

This may be … in spite of all the accolades over his career … Urban Meyer’s (and his staff’s) best individual season. How Meyer has reset the deck after losing his star quarterback, Heisman Trophy candidate, and veteran leader in Braxton Miller and come to this point is the stuff of coaching legend.

Michigan State speaks for itself right now, and while the defense isn’t at the level it was last year, the offense is markedly improved enough to make up for it. The Spartans’ one loss is at Oregon, which, unless you’re Arizona apparently, isn’t a place you go to and win unless your name is “Oregon.”

Then there’s Nebraska, which very likely should (will) play in the Big Ten title game as a one-loss team … probably opposite another one-loss team.

The politics of the sport’s ways of determining a champion SHOULD be ignored, and that’s the playoff committee’s job. What Joe Message Board guy or Mark May thinks of the Big Ten shouldn’t matter a wit; only the thoughts of the people in the room making the decisions should count.

As the remainder of college football feasts on itself, be ready for a B1G team in the playoffs … and don’t be surprised if that team gives chase at winning the whole damn thing, whatever name it may be.

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