4. The Really Big Thing Was …
The SEC is absolutely insane – and this matters in a big, big way for the College Football Playoff chase.
Granted, this is a weird year and the CFP committee will take into account every factor, but no two-loss team has ever made it into the final four.
We’ve had teams that didn’t win their own conference championships or even their divisions, but the one-loss barrier has yet to be broken.
The Big 12 is all but done in the playoff chase. Oklahoma State will get in if it wins out and goes unbeaten, but the conference is so down – thank you, Sun Belt – that it’s going to be tough for a one-loss champion to get in.
The Pac-12 will have a hard time getting a team in with just six regular season games and a championship, and if it’s not Cincinnati, forget about a Group of Five program slipping in.
That leaves the ACC, Big Ten and SEC as the most likely conferences to make up the four CFP teams. However, only two unbeaten SEC teams are left standing, and one of them will get knocked off this weekend when Alabama and Georgia go at it.
Of course the committee will take into account if the loser of the SEC championship has two losses but is still fantastic – like if the Tide-Bulldog loser drops a rematch in the championship – and there’s a degree of difficulty added to the dismount when it comes to SEC teams in a year without any non-conference games for the league, but there are problems.
The Georgia offense hasn’t been even or consistent. The Bama defense leaves a whole lot to be desired, and the Florida secondary doesn’t seem to know the season has started. Those are the three most likely SEC teams in the playoff chase.
Auburn can’t seem to score, Texas A&M doesn’t look like it’ll be the least bit consistent, LSU has decided to take the year off, and Tennessee isn’t going to win out.
It’s a long-winded way of saying that after this weekend, don’t automatically assume two SEC teams are getting into the College Football Playoff.
That leads to …