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2018 isn’t the most dramatic college football season at the top. Plenty of oddball teams are succeeding in the middle, and the New Year’s Six race has sufficient drama, but the Playoff race itself likely only has gentle twists still to go ……………….. unless the Big One strikes.
What will 2018 add to the list of the Playoff’s biggest controversies? It’s almost certainly somewhere in the following list.
11. UCF wins or loses any game against anybody in any timeline: Nothing matters.
10. Washington State loses to anybody: The Pac-12 then misses the College Football Playoff. Few things are more normal than that.
9. Oklahoma and West Virginia go 1-1 against each other, Iowa State raises new levels of hell, or some other result in which the Big 12 has no one-loss teams: The Big 12 is then out of the College Football Playoff again … thanks in part to the reincarnated version of the Big 12 Championship that wrecked many a national title shot before. I’m counting all of Big 12 revelry as just one game, and it’s technically more than that, but not a whole lot more.
8. Alabama loses to Auburn: Say the top four win out, other than Bama losing to Auburn before beating Georgia. The Tide are still in the Playoff, and are we sure they’re down at No. 4? Could they enter at No. 3, ahead of a Big Ten champ Ohio State, for example?
For both of the following groups, we can only guess based on likely résumés. Let’s do that at the end of this post.
6.
Clemson loses to Duke/South Carolina
Clemson loses the ACC Championship
Clemson continues to close in on Bama, at least according to S&P+. And the committee seemed to really like the ACC Atlantic a week ago, throwing three Clemson opponents into the top 20.
But that part’s on thin ice. So how would the Tigers look if they became a dominant 12-1 team in a season with at least a couple others of those?
4.
Notre Dame loses to Syracuse
Notre Dame loses to USC
Notre Dame has that shiny win over Michigan and wins over two other Power 5 division leaders (such as they are), but the numbers aren’t impressed with how the Irish have done it.
The consensus has long been that the Irish need to win 12 games in order to make it, but how sure are we about that? Could 11 get it done?
3. Ohio State wins out: We’re so deprived of chaos, Ohio State barreling into yet another Playoff picture would count as a dose of anarchy. (But take a look at the résumés table below. I’m no longer 100 percent certain the Buckeyes are win-and-in.)
2. The Big Ten East champ loses to Northwestern: The Big Ten’s spot opens up! I’d guess a one-loss Big 12 champ slides in, if we have one of those.
1. Alabama loses to Georgia
Two gotta go, and remember the committee put a significantly lesser Alabama in the Playoff last year, then saw that team vindicate it to some degree by winning the whole thing:
- 12-1 Alabama
- 13-0 Clemson
- 12-1 Georgia
- 12-0 Notre Dame
- 12-1 Michigan
- 12-1 Oklahoma
Have fun!
Here’s one guess as to how things might stack up in any number of overlapping potential realities:
Potential Playoff resumes
| Team | S&P+ ranking | Record vs. bowl teams (estimated) | Record vs. top 25 (estimated) | Record vs. top 10 (estimated) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | S&P+ ranking | Record vs. bowl teams (estimated) | Record vs. top 25 (estimated) | Record vs. top 10 (estimated) |
| 13-0 Alabama | 1 | 10-0 | 4-0 | 2-0 |
| 13-0 Clemson | 2 | 10-0 | 3-0 | 0-0 |
| 12-0 Notre Dame | 6 | 7-0 | 3-0 | 1-0 |
| 12-1 Alabama (Auburn loss) | 1 | 9-1 | 4-1 | 2-0 |
| 12-1 Georgia | 3 | 9-1 | 4-1 | 2-1 |
| 12-1 Alabama (Georgia loss) | 1 | 9-1 | 3-1 | 1-1 |
| 12-1 Michigan | 4 | 8-1 | 3-1 | 1-1 |
| 12-1 Clemson (South Carolina loss) | 2 | 9-1 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
| 12-1 Oklahoma | 5 | 8-1 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
| 12-1 Clemson (Pitt loss) | 2 | 9-1 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
| 12-1 Ohio State | 8 | 6-1 | 3-0 | 1-0 |
| 11-1 West Virginia | 12 | 7-1 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
| 11-1 Notre Dame (USC loss) | 6 | 6-1 | 3-0 | 1-0 |
| 11-1 Notre Dame (Syracuse loss) | 6 | 6-1 | 2-1 | 1-1 |
| 12-1 Washington State | 16 | 6-1 | 3-1 | 0-0 |
A lot of these are real close and could depend on the committee’s interpretation of things that have already happened and things yet to happen, but I’d figure something like this is a starting point.
I tried to keep these “estimated” totals fair across teams, such as by counting Stanford and Missouri as top-25 wins for everyone, Purdue as a .500-plus win for everyone, etc.
There are obviously mitigating circumstances that’d swing some things that table. For example, I had the Big 12 champ beating the runner-up twice and thus knocking that team out of the top 10, but it’s roughly just as likely that Iowa State or Texas is in the Big 12 Championship, thus preserving a win over Oklahoma or West Virginia as a top-10 win. If that sentence didn’t make any sense, don’t worry about it.
The point is: if an undefeated SEC team loses to the SEC champ in a year with an undefeated Notre Dame and undefeated ACC champ, prepare for (probably justified!) boiling outrage from every part of the country that isn’t South Bend, the Southeast, or the Mid-Atlantic.
Did I miss something crucial? Let me know, and let’s add it.
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