Six teams (four from SEC) true contenders for national CFP title
Does being a College Football Playoff contender make a team a national championship contender? My first instinct is to say yes, especially for the 11 Power Four qualifiers. Even the at-large qualifiers from the SEC and Big Ten will be battle-tested teams. Really good teams.
But, national championship-level teams?
The more I consider it, the more I think that simply being a playoff qualifier does not make you a national championship contender.
Last year’s Ole Miss and Missouri teams were test subjects for this conversation. Each finished 11-2 and earned some notable wins. Ole Miss beat LSU and Penn State. Missouri toppled Tennessee and Ohio State.
If the 12-team playoff had been in place, Missouri and Ole Miss would have qualified. That wouldn’t have made them national championship contenders, though.
Ole Miss losing to Alabama and getting routed by Georgia during the regular season clarified its contender status. Likewise, Missouri’s losses to LSU and Georgia put its reality into perspective.
Missouri and Ole Miss were worthy 12-team playoff teams. Not national championship teams, though.
That’s useful reference as we consider this season and draw a line of separation between playoff contenders and national championship contenders.
I list seven SEC teams as serious playoff contenders: Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss, Alabama, Missouri, LSU and Tennessee. Including all conferences, there’s probably 20 to 30 teams with realistic playoff hopes in the preseason.
That’s the beauty of the expanded playoff. There weren’t a dozen teams, let alone 30, that could have said with a straight face last summer that they were a serious contender for the four-team playoff.
But, growing the playoff doesn’t grow the list of serious national championship contenders much, if at all.
The SEC and Big Ten gobbled up the top programs from the Big 12 and Pac-12, making the Power Two bigger and stronger. Those two conferences could account for as much as 75% of the playoff field.
I strongly believe the national champion will emerge from one of those two conferences.
Within those leagues, who are the serious national championship contenders? I see six: Georgia, Texas, Ole Miss and Alabama from the SEC, plus Ohio State and Oregon from the Big Ten.
The best teams not within that six-pack will fight for a playoff spot, while lacking the full package required to contend for a national championship.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's SEC Columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer. Also, check out his podcast, SEC Football Unfiltered.
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