I tip my cap to Northwestern.

What the Wildcats did in the final 8 games to win the B1G West and punch their tickets to Indianapolis deserves praise. Pat Fitzgerald was the obvious choice for B1G Coach of the Year. The Cats earned everything they got in 2018.

But can you imagine if we were talking about a potential Playoff berth being up for grabs this weekend?

As in, 8-4 Northwestern being a win away from making the Playoff field of 8. Nope. Don’t like that. Call me crazy, but I don’t like the idea of rewarding a team that lost 4 regular season games with the opportunity to play for a national title.

That’s what would be the result of Playoff expansion. If you want the five Power 5 conference champs, a Group of 5 and a couple at-large teams, you’re saying you want 2018 Northwestern to have a crack at this year’s Playoff.

Sorry, but that would be an awful development for the sport with the best regular season there is.

Why? Well, as you recall, Northwestern lost against Akron. At home. In case you forgot, the Zips went 2-6 vs. the MAC.

But hey, let’s create a system where that game didn’t mean anything!

Better yet, let’s create a system were non-conference games are basically just exhibition games. That’s essentially what they’d become. Remember, Northwestern didn’t win a single non-conference game, yet it went 7-1 playing in arguably the weakest division in college football so now it’s deserving of a Playoff berth? That’s not the kind of world I want to live in.

The kind of world I want to live in is one when everyone freaks out when a top-10 team loses and we debate if they still have a chance at making the Playoff. Not all schedules are created equal — the SEC has 4 top-10 teams while the Pac-12 has none — and to operate in a system that suggests that they are would be foolish.

Credit: Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Speaking of scheduling, what would be the point of scheduling any quality non-conference opponent if the field expanded to 8 with automatic bids for conference champs? Sure, the at-large berths are there, but a team can probably get there following the 2017 Alabama path or the 2016 Ohio State path of having 1 loss (in conference play) and not playing in a conference title game.

In other words, kiss those headliner non-conference matchups you love goodbye. Instead, say hello to there being more arguments than ever about not just conference strength, but division strength. Woof. I’m already sick of it.

Just think about how backwards this is. Michigan, which beat Northwestern in Evanston, just lost its second game of the year and first in B1G play. Both losses came to top-10 teams in true road games. Michigan went 8-1 in conference play. Yet it’s Northwestern, with double the losses and without the head-to-head advantage, who’s a win away from the automatic Playoff bid while the Wolverines are a possible coin flip for one of two at-large spots. Then again, Ohio State and Oklahoma losing in their respective conference title games would probably get the nod.

Starting to see why this doesn’t make any sense?

This isn’t just me having an elitist approach and trying to keep lesser-known programs out of the mix. It doesn’t matter to me if Rutgers or Alabama makes the field, as long as they deserve to be there.

The idea that college football can just snap its fingers and do what college basketball does isn’t logical. We all love the madness, but it’s a different schedule structure because college basketball teams play 3 times as many regular season games. To try and replicate the postseason model would be absurd.

And I’d actually argue that college football has something that college basketball desperately wants. There’s year-round debate and not just March debate. That’s tremendous for the sport.

Would I be extremely entertained by watching Jim Harbaugh’s proposed 16-team field come every December? Of course. But would we be having different discussions about the sport for the first 3 months? Definitely.

Now, if we’re talking about potentially three Power 5 conferences getting left out of the field in favor of multiple SEC teams an in independent, I fully expect there to be the strongest movement we’ve ever had to expand the field. The system was created so that we could get more conferences involved instead of it being the BCS system that essentially turned into the SEC champ vs. the best at-large team.

But I would exercise extreme caution in expanding the field just to make conference title games matter.

It’s OK to admit that Northwestern doesn’t deserve a chance to play for a national title. There’s nothing wrong with a system that excludes teams with 4 regular season losses and a goose egg in non-conference play.

Northwestern earned the right to play for something it hasn’t won outright since Fitzgerald was tackling dudes instead of coaching them. The Wildcats are playing for history on Saturday.

Let’s just not trick ourselves into thinking the system would be better if they were playing for a Playoff bid.