Playoff picture remains murky
In craving ultimate chaos and resentment — and really, who doesn’t? — here are some unbiased guidelines for the college football weekend ahead: Go Penn State. Go Virginia Tech. To some degree: Go Colorado. Then, most importantly: Go Navy and, by all means, Western Michigan.
First, let’s clear aside the games of zero to limited influence, bless them. Alabama (12-0) will play Florida (9-3) on Saturday afternoon in the Southeastern Conference championship game in Atlanta. If Alabama wins, it will make the four-team playoff. If Alabama loses, it will make the four-team playoff. If Florida’s crawling offence manages more than 200 yards against Alabama’s defence, it should hold a parade down Peachtree Street, the numeral “200” in lights above the Jim McElwain float.
Otherwise, they shouldn’t even really play this game. They should cancel it and save the energy used to light the stadium.
Two other games once seemed to have a chance of sowing chaos but, as things shook and shook and shook out, have wound up with either zero chance of sowing chaos or only a slight chance of sowing chaos. This must be sombre for them in a country that prizes loudness.
In Norman, Oklahoma, they’ll play the 111th meeting between No. 9 Oklahoma and No. 10 Oklahoma State, whose feelings for one another remain complicated.
Yet playoff-wise, this doesn’t seem to matter. The playoff will contain four teams unless the 12-member College Football Playoff selection committee throws up its hands, orders room-service whiskey and expands the bracket in the coming weekend. One playoff entrant will be Alabama, and another will be Ohio State (11-1), unless some people will have to write apologies.
As the ancient College Football Playoff texts have it, it’s some nasty calculus when you’re in a system that values quality wins and you’re operating from spots Nos. 10 and 9 and four teams in front of you are squaring off in two other games. That would be No. 7 Penn State (10-2) against No. 6 Wisconsin (10-2), and No. 8 Colorado (10-2) against No. 4 Washington (11-1). The winners of those two games would seem to stave off the winner of the Oklahoman game known as Bedlam, both having added a win bigger than Bedlam.
Going by this, well, college football logic, the Big 12 will be excluded for the second time in the three years of the fresh system. In the Pacific-12 championship on Friday night in Santa Clara, California, either Washington or Colorado will win. If Washington wins, it would be hard to see it slipping out of No. 4 and below No. 5 Michigan, even as committee chairperson Kirby Hocutt did make a big whoop out of the minuscule difference between the two in recent committee deliberations. If Washington did win and slip out in favour of a surging Wisconsin and its superior nonconference schedule — what with just about any nonconference schedule being superior to Washington’s — that might stir some ire.
If the astonishing Colorado wins, it would be hard to see it slipping ahead of No. 5 Michigan and Michigan’s three wins over top-10 teams, one of which was Colorado. Colorado would not seem to squeeze in unless it squeezed in one spot behind Michigan.
Amild chance of chaos could greet a Colorado win coupled with a loss by No. 3 Clemson (11-1) to Virginia Tech. That would remove team No. 4 (Washington) from the squabble, and it could just about remove team No. 3 (Clemson), unless the committee let Clemson hang in the quartet at 11-2 because, for one thing, it dared to visit Auburn in nonconference play, and the committee clearly adores nonconference dares, as well it should.
If, however, both Washington and Clemson were out, that would leave three teams trying to shoehorn into two spots: Michigan, Colorado and the Big Ten winner. Just as it’s hard to see Colorado pipping Michigan, it’s hard to see Colorado pipping the Big Ten winner, for a committee that has nodded toward the Big Ten all along.
If the top four winds up with two or even three conference non-champions happily in while three champions sit in a huff in the dreaded Nos. 5-7, that could stoke a luscious buffet of resentment set to lavish itself across the holiday season and the decades beyond. It would include a discussion of the value of conference championships set against nonconference derring-do such as Ohio State venturing to Oklahoma to maul the gifted locals there.
If the top four winds up with two Big Ten non-champions and Penn State seated churlishly at No. 5, there could be viable seething in that instance, yes. It’s easier to argue against a Big Ten champion Wisconsin than it would be to argue against a Big Ten champion Penn State with its win over Ohio State. So: Go Penn State.
If the top four winds up with three Big Ten teams, with three Power Five conferences omitted entirely, that, too, could direct some loathing toward that span of land between Lincoln and College Park, the kind of loathing that used to propel itself toward the Gainesville-College Station corridor.
The Big Ten, having loathed for so long, could get loathed in return.