Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond, or a guppy in a vast ocean inhabited by great white sharks named Alabama, Ohio State and USC?
That’s the question schools that occupy the lower rungs of college football’s caste system are asking themselves as the gap between the sport’s haves and have-nots widens into a yawning chasm.
Northern Illinois Athletic Director Sean Frazier recently accelerated the discussion when he told ESPN.com it was time for the Group of Five conferences to “have a realistic conversation” about holding their own playoff, separate from the one that has Alabama playing Clemson on Monday night in Tampa, Fla.