Dan Lanning, Oregon football

While some coaches, mainly those not playing in conference championship games, speculate about the risk-reward of being in their league’s biggest event, Dan Lanning sees far more upside to Oregon playing in the Big Ten Championship.

The top-ranked Ducks (12-0, 9-0 Big Ten) are the only undefeated FBS team and have been atop the College Football Playoff rankings all four weeks thus far and surely will be again entering Saturday’s matchup with No. 4 Penn State. The winner earns a first-round bye and will play in the Rose Bowl in a quarterfinal game, most likely as the No. 1 or 2 seed, while the loser will likely host a first round game two weeks later as the No. 5 or 6 seed.

“I see a lot more pros than cons,” Lanning said. “For us it’s the opportunity to compete for a championship in a league that’s one of the toughest in college football. You only get so many opportunities to play games and I value every one of those for our players. The chance to step out on the field and compete with their brothers, that’s a big positive.

“The timing of college football right now is a little bit chaotic with all the things that are happening this week, I don’t know that that’s the most convenient piece. If you can adapt to the challenge, what an opportunity and that’s our challenge is being to adapt to that opportunity. There’s some teams that are going to be playing in a playoff game, they get a little time to relax and watch ball this week but we don’t mind being active and getting the opportunity to compete for a championship.”

The politicking that’s gone on and will continue to through next Sunday’s CFP selections is around at-large bids and perceptions about the relative difficulty of each team’s path to the national championship.

If Oregon wins, it will surely be the No. 1 seed and face the winner of the No. 8 versus No. 9 game, which as of last week would have been Georgia and Tennessee. Compare that to the No. 5 seed, which hosts the No. 12 with the winner advancing to play the No. 4 seed in the Fiesta Bowl in a quarterfinal game. As of last week, that would have been Arizona State at Ohio State with the winner playing Boise State.

While talking heads and fans debate mythical brackets, and surely the official one next week as well, Lanning sees the bye as a “huge advantage” regardless.

“Who cares? Put the ball out, let’s go play football,” Lanning said. “You line up against who they put in the bracket. At the end of the day, you got to win your games to get to the end. Obviously there’s benefit to having more time to prepare for an opponent and you should have a benefit if you go and win your conference championship game. There’s definitely a huge advantage there of putting yourself a step closer to the end-all goal.”

The other risk of conference championship games is if a loser misses out of the CFP entirely as a result of another loss while a team that didn’t even reach its conference title game makes the 12-team field. That would disincentive reaching the event, which is what Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin pointed out last month.

“I think everybody recognizes that we want to make sure that these playoff games do not become a penalty,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “I think there’s been a lot of conversation about that. There’s a bunch of really good football people that are on the committee that I think understand that. But besides that, at this time I don’t have a whole lot of questions or concern because I’m totally focused on putting our team in the best position to beat Oregon. That’s really what our focus is on.

“All those other things I’ll leave those up the commissioners. I’ll leave those things up to the college football playoff committee and I think everybody has the same goal in mind: doing what’s best for college football an the student-athletes and getting the best 12 teams in the game and trying to set it up in a way that you earn the right to where you’re seeded, throughout the entire season and the collective body of work. We’ll see how that plays out. What I do know is no matter what happens and whatever is decided some people won’t be happy about it.”