Here is my idea on how the conference should handle scheduling. Establish tiers and schedule teams based on their tier level. With 18 teams they could divide into 3 even tiers of 6 teams (high, mid, low). Your baseline is set based on prior years performance and no team can advance or fall more than one tier a year. So for example, for Iu since we came off a bad season and just finished a great season we would go from a low tier baseline to mid tier next year. Since we play 9 games (which means at least 4 extra games outside your other 5 opponents in your tier), rivalry games remain protected and any other games outside your tier are scheduled no more than one tier level higher or lower (unless a protected rivalry). Mid tier crossover games whether up or down is based on average wins over last 5 years. Consistently good but not great teams would have crossover games with the high tier, and those that just advanced or just aren’t consistently good will crossover with low tier
I mean this is simple enough that you could create better matchups every year and not punish the teams that are building or just not ever any good with having to play osu, Oregon, psu, and UM all in the same season when you didn’t even make a bowl game the year prior. Teams like Oregon, OSu, PSU, and UM who are traditionally the top teams will have no argument against them at CFP time that they play the best and creates more marquee matchups that will generate revenue for the conference. Osu may be the only team that faced the best the B1G has to offer this season although in this scenario they probably wouldn’t have played Indiana this past year or likely even next year.