AUBURN, Ala. — Just a week before revealing its final four-team bracket, the College Football Playoff selection committee faces its biggest challenge yet.
In the three previous seasons of the playoff, three of the five power conferences had clear-cut, one-loss or undefeated teams that went on to win their championship games. In the first year of the playoff, 2014, the only disagreement about the committee’s final judgment was over the semantics of the “13th data point” that put Ohio State in over the Big 12 co-champions Baylor and Texas Christian. In 2015 and 2016, the committee was so confident about two 11-1 teams that it telegraphed ahead of time that each would make it in.
This year is much messier, and this weekend’s games, starting with No. 2 Miami’s loss to Pittsburgh on Friday and including Saturday’s Iron Bowl, where top-ranked Alabama lost to Auburn, did not help.
The next round of playoff rankings will be released Tuesday night, but never before, it seems, have so many teams been alive for the four spots with only the conference championship games to go. Georgia. Auburn. Miami. Clemson. Wisconsin. Ohio State. Oklahoma. Maybe even Texas Christian and Alabama, the latter on pedigree alone.
The potential for chaos exists despite the fact that never before in the playoff’s three completed seasons has one of the five power conferences dug itself so deep a hole as has the Pacific-12, which features two teams with at least two losses, Stanford (9-3) and Southern California (10-2), in its title game Friday night.
Indeed, although Stanford slammed the door on Notre Dame (9-3) on Saturday night, 38-20, the biggest news in the Pac-12 this weekend might have been the return of Chip Kelly, who, several years after making Oregon into a national title contender and then departing for the NFL, was hired Saturday by UCLA.
As the Bruins (6-6) settle for a mid-tier bowl, the committee will watch the five power conference title games play out and then release their final rankings on Dec. 3, seeding first versus fourth and second versus third in the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, California, and the Sugar Bowl, in New Orleans. The priorities that day will be to give the top-ranked team home-field advantage and to try to avoid a rematch — which could become a surprisingly germane detail.
Judging by where their teams are currently ranked, two of the championship games are effectively national quarterfinals, with their winners all but guaranteed semifinal berths. The winner of the Southeastern Conference game — in Atlanta, between Auburn (10-2) and Georgia (11-1) — is in. So is the winner of the Atlantic Coast Conference game in Charlotte, North Carolina, between Clemson (11-1), which boasts an early-season win over Auburn, and Miami (11-1).
Two more title games promise playoff spots should the right team win them. Unbeaten Wisconsin (12-0) plays Ohio State (10-2) for the Big Ten championship in Indianapolis, and, despite the Badgers’ generally weak schedule, it would be all but unfathomable for the committee, which serves a playoff that was created precisely to ensure undefeated power conference champions can play for all the marbles, not to make the final bracket with a win. Similarly, Oklahoma (11-1), with wins over Ohio State and its own conference championship opponent, Texas Christian (10-2), on its résumé already, is a virtual shoo-in with a win and the Big 12 championship.
But what if the “wrong” teams win those latter two games? Who fills the remaining two spots?
Cross off Notre Dame and Stanford, with their three losses (even if one wonders whether Stanford, which won eight of its last nine games, is better than its record). The same is true for Penn State; the committee has seemed strangely ill-disposed to the Nittany Lions (10-2), ranking it behind Ohio State even though Penn State’s two losses came to two ranked teams — the Buckeyes and Michigan State (9-3) — on the road by a combined 4 points.
Cross off, also, Central Florida, the clearest proof yet that a team from the Group of Five conferences would have to play an almost impossibly difficult out-of-conference schedule to receive the committee’s considerations. With a win over Memphis, another well-regarded and ranked opponent, in the American Athletic Conference title game, the Knights would be 12-0 champions, and they rarely won by a little. Still, in last week’s rankings, the committee slotted them 15th.
Who is left, then, for the two spots alongside the SEC and ACC champs?
— Southern California, TCU and Ohio State all could finish 11-2 and power-conference champions.
— The loser of Clemson-Miami; Georgia, if it is defeated again by Auburn; and Oklahoma could be two-loss power-conference runners-up. (Given its two losses, Auburn most likely must win the SEC title to receive playoff consideration).
— Alabama will sit at home and remain 11-1.
Defending national champion Clemson, even if it loses, has a strong résumé, with the committee seemingly discounting its sole regular-season loss, at Syracuse, which the Tigers partly played without their quarterback, Kelly Bryant. Alternatively, how much shame would there be in Miami’s losing to the likely No. 1 seed?
USC and TCU were slotted behind four other two-loss teams entering Saturday, leaving their chances dim but not unimaginable, and it is highly unlikely at this point that the committee will get religion on one of those teams ahead of them, like Penn State.
So the photo finish probably will be between those two redoubtable blue bloods Ohio State and Alabama. Ohio State lost to Oklahoma and lost badly at Iowa, but otherwise generally took care of business, including against the well regarded Penn State and Michigan State (and, in this best-case scenario, Wisconsin). Alabama is likely to have beaten just one ranked team, Louisiana State, but statistically it has been its usual dominant self. And it would not be unprecedented for an 11-1 non-champion, such as Alabama, to leap over an 11-2 champion, such as Ohio State. Ohio State did it to Penn State last season.
Alabama’s coach, Nick Saban, has an opinion, in case you were wondering.
“We have won 11 games, and not many teams have been able to do that,” Saban said Saturday night.
He added, “I think this team deserves the opportunity to get into the playoff.”
Anyone want to argue with that?
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