We’ve somehow made it to the final week of college football’s regular season. I know — I can’t believe it, either.
But we’ve still got three sets of College Football Playoff rankings to go. On Tuesday night, we’ll see what the selection committee makes of three-loss Alabama and three-loss Ole Miss. We’ll learn how the group treats Indiana after its first defeat came at the hands of the No. 2 team in the country. Will the ACC be well-positioned to get two teams into the 12-team field? Could the committee re-evaluate its stance on Boise State and move the projected Big 12 champion ahead back ahead of the Broncos? These are just some of the questions I want answered this week.
I’ve also answered them myself. As I evaluated teams and resumes here in Week 14, I’ve come to the very obvious conclusion that the bubble is filled with flawed teams. It’s so similar to the men’s NCAA Tournament bubble, although in that case we’re arguing about the 35th- and 36th-best teams in the country. But the point remains the same: If you’re close to the cut line, it’s because you didn’t fully take care of business. That’s why this decision will be made by 13 people in a Texas boardroom.
Alabama has now lost three games, and two of them are not good losses. Vanderbilt will likely finish the season with a .500 record. Before beating the Tide, Oklahoma had only had one SEC win on the season; it’s been such a rough season for coach Brent Venables that he had to fire his offensive coordinator in mid-October. And Alabama wasn’t even remotely competitive against the Sooners, scoring the fewest points it’s had in a game since 2004.
At some point, a certain number of losses should be disqualifying. Alabama has lost more than a quarter of the games it has played this year. So has Ole Miss, who has an indefensible loss to Kentucky — the Cats’ only SEC win this season — and a bad loss to Florida, which had been .500 heading into Saturday’s game. The Rebels’ loss to LSU is aging badly, too.
Still, Alabama is close to making the cut. I’ve got the Tide as my first team out of the bracket, largely on the strength of their win over Georgia, coupled with a top-15 win over South Carolina and a win over LSU (that, admittedly, is weakening by the week as the Tigers continue to freefall). Because of the head-to-head result, I’ve got to keep the Tide ahead of three-loss South Carolina — a team I think is actually playing better than Alabama — and I’ve also got a two-loss Clemson in the mix with them as well. It is possible that the winner of Clemson-South Carolina this weekend jumps ahead of Alabama by Selection Sunday. Either way, as much as I’d love to fully eliminate all the three-loss teams, I can’t quite do it with the Tide … even after a historically lopsided loss to Oklahoma.
The three bad losses in SEC country last Saturday — Alabama’s to Oklahoma, Ole Miss’ to Florida and Texas A&M’s to Auburn — significantly helps Indiana stay in the bracket after its first loss of the year, to Ohio State. The Hoosiers’ strength of schedule is also much stronger now that it played a team with a pulse; it now ranks 51st in the country per ESPN, ahead of Oregon, Miami, Arizona State, SMU, Notre Dame and Boise State. While Indiana is definitely now a bubble team, I think that it’ll be on the right side of the bubble considering its dominance in its wins, its strength of record (7th in FBS) and its only loss coming to a team that the committee greatly respects. Penn State has a loss to No. 2 Ohio State, too, and the Nittany Lions have been ranked in the top five for weeks (without a marquee win to prop up their resume, just like the Hoosiers lack).
The ACC should be well-positioned to get two teams into the 12-team field now that the SEC has cannibalized itself a bit as well. If the SEC only sends three teams to the CFP instead of four, I expect the ACC to take advantage of the opening. SMU should slide into the field now, which should position the Mustangs or Miami (whoever loses the ACC championship game) to be ranked high enough to stay in the 12-team field if they lose in the additional game. Remember, the committee is being pressured not to penalize the losers of conference title games.
Meanwhile, the myriad upsets in the Big 12 have cemented the conference’s fate as a one-bid league. Things are so dire in that conference that there’s a real fear the Big 12 champion will be leapfrogged by a Mountain West champion Boise State team, and that the Broncos would earn the No. 4 seed and a first-round bye. The committee suggested its willingness to do that by ranking Boise State ahead of BYU and Colorado last week. And I tend to agree with the committee here if the Big 12 champion ends up being two-loss Arizona State, as I’m projecting.
The rest of my projected bracket should be relatively straightforward. I’m still projecting Oregon to win the Big Ten, Texas to win the SEC and Miami to win the ACC. I’ve got Ohio State, Notre Dame, Penn State and Georgia hosting first-round games, and SMU as my last team into the field. And while I’m sure there will be grumbling about the teams on the outside looking in, I again implore you to think about the losses they could have avoided and the flaws they could have addressed by now. Teams are who they are and what they’ve done. Results matter. And my projected bracket reflects that.
