College Football Playoff chaos scenarios that will force me to change my stance on expansion
With one week remaining in the regular season, there are nine teams that are still alive to make the College Football Playoff’s four-team field.
That means, starting now, there could be as many as 15 quasi-CFP games in the next two weeks — including conference championship weekend.
Win or lose. In or out. Survive or die.
Realize it or not, the expanded College Football Playoff everyone wants is already kind of here. This is the epitome of what makes the four-team CFP field elite. The anticipation, the debates, the hypotheticals — all of it is so perfectly college football. We are now in the put up or shut up phase, where the highly meaningful regular season has given us 12 weeks of data. We’re finally going to see which teams are legitimate national title contenders and which ones pretended for two and a half months. If a team is unbeaten or has one loss and has a game in the next two weeks, it is a Playoff game. Perfection.
But I have to admit, I’m a little nervous. Why? Because chaos could legitimately happen this year. And that would force me to change my stance against Playoff expansion.
Major upsets haven’t been happening with the same frequency this year. Scares? Sure. But chalk has been holding. This is the first time in the CFP era that we’ve arrived at this point of the season and still have five unbeaten teams. The Big 12 is the only Power 5 conference without an unbeaten, but Texas — a one-loss team with an inside track to the conference championship game — has arguably the best win in college football. And after the Ohio State–Michigan game this weekend, we will be down to four unbeaten teams … and one upset away from a complete disaster. Four Power 5 unbeatens? Easy. Three Power 5 unbeatens and a few other qualified candidates? Nightmare.
It has been easy to say “win out and you’re in” in regards to one-loss teams like Texas or Alabama this year because we’ve been programmed in the past to anticipate losses and cleared paths at this time of year. We’re a season removed from the CFP not really even having four viable options. But what if the path doesn’t fully clear this year? What if there are five or six real candidates with only four spots available?
Let’s go through some chaos scenarios that are actually realistic. These aren’t the off-the-wall scenarios with the same odds as a 14-team parlay. Here are three real-life possibilities the committee may have to tackle
• Washington (undefeated Pac-12 champ), Florida State (undefeated ACC champ), Michigan (undefeated Big Ten champ), Alabama (one-loss SEC champ), Texas (one-loss Big 12 champ with a head-to-head win over Alabama)
• Georgia (undefeated SEC champ), Florida State (undefeated ACC champ), Ohio State (undefeated Big Ten champ), Texas (one-loss Big 12 champ), Oregon (one-loss Pac-12 champ)
• Florida State (undefeated ACC champ), Michigan (undefeated Big Ten champ), Alabama (one-loss SEC champ), Texas (one-loss Big 12 champ with a head-to-head win over Alabama), Oregon (one-loss Pac-12 champ).
And how will the committee judge Florida State, which recently lost starting quarterback Jordan Travis to a season-ending injury? An undefeated FSU team that wins the ACC title will have a Playoff-worthy resume, but would the committee actually select the Travis-less Seminoles over a one-loss Alabama and/or a one-less Texas? That could be a discussion point.
This also doesn’t take into account the truly bananas hypotheticals that exist if Iowa wins the Big Ten title. You could make a 10-page document of things that could theoretically still happen that would light that cozy conference room in Grapevine, Texas, on fire. The three scenarios above include rational results that wouldn’t require sportsbook-breaking upsets. In all three, there is a subjective decision that would have to be made by the committee that would guarantee a viable Power 5 option is left home.
That’s not what should happen in sports.
There is a large portion of college football fans who actually root for chaos, root for the College Football Playoff committee to be put in a blender at the end of the season by being forced to make an impossible decision. I’ve never understood why people actively root for that. To me, it’s unsatisfying to have a season end with “what-if” scenarios or deserving teams being left out. But, alas, some people just want to watch the world burn.
This year, it could burn. And if it does, I’ll have no choice but to admit the four-team CFP had to die even though I was so vehemently against the expansion to 12 (I still think 12 is too many).
It’s certainly entertaining to have the debate right now about who would be left out between a one-loss Big 12 champion Texas and a one-loss SEC champion Alabama. That’s podcast and column fodder.
On one hand, Texas literally went on the road and beat Alabama. On the other hand, Alabama will have just defeated Georgia in Atlanta, captured the SEC title and clearly would be a much-improved, different version of itself. This Crimson Tide team is unequivocally different than the one Texas beat in September.
In a perfect world, the committee would honor the results of the head-to-head matchup, but that’s not how it works. The head-to-head is a tiebreaker, so if the committee deems Alabama a far and away better option, it can choose the Crimson Tide over the team it lost to.
I’d choose Texas because the regular season is sacred. The committee, unfortunately, likely would choose Alabama because it isn’t leaving out a one-loss SEC champ with a win over the two-time defending national champs. It’s just not.
Yes, the debate is fun. But if the debate actually came to fruition and Texas or Alabama were left out, that would be such a dissatisfying result. College football is a story, and this shouldn’t be a television show that fails to tie up loose ends. We want answers, not what-ifs.
Now, the season may end with four undefeated Power 5 champions, and the committee may not be forced to make any difficult decisions. Things have a funny way of working out when the regular season is complete and all of the data is at the committee’s disposal.
Even in 2014 when TCU and Baylor were left out, Ohio State was the best fourth option and a natural choice for a committee that couldn’t possibly decide between the Horned Frogs and the Bears. Ohio State won the national championship in the inaugural year of the new format.
To this day, you can, without question, say the CFP committee has never gotten it wrong. TCU and Baylor fans are still bitterly disappointed with being omitted in 2014, but the committee chose the right team.
If one-loss iterations of Texas or Oregon or Alabama end up getting left out because there were too many deserving teams and not enough spots, I’ll openly wave the white flag and admit it’s time for expansion.
But I’m hoping we get a ton of exciting — and shocking — results in the next two weeks that help clear that CFP pathway. That is what makes the race to the four-team field the most thrilling television show in all of sports.
(Top photo of Quinn Ewers: Richard Rodriguez / Getty Images)
