Well, it’s going to be a very interesting Sunday when the College Football Playoff committee unveils the four teams that will be a part of the journey to a national championship.
Why?
Because it’s the most chaos we’ve seen since the start of the playoff system, and there’s going to be legitimate concerns and very reasonable arguments against at least two of the teams that get in no matter what is announced on Sunday.
Michigan and Washington are almost assuredly in as No. 1 and No. 2. Beyond that, the committee will have to choose among Florida State, Texas, Alabama and Georgia. The Seminoles are undefeated but are hobbled on offense with starting quarterback Jordan Travis sidelined by injury.
The other three teams have one-loss, but two of them — Texas and Alabama — are conference champions — a tie-breaker with all things being equal. Georgia was the clear No. 1 team for a few weeks prior to this. Will the Bulldogs really fall below No. 4 after the nail-biter in Atlanta against Alabama in the SEC Championship game?
It’s going to be messy and one of the reasons most folks can’t wait for the start of a 12-team playoff next season. We even got in on the act and tried to predict the final College Football Playoff rankings and which four teams will be a part of the journey to confetti. We also predicted and projected all of the Big Ten bowl games including the New Year’s Six games and the CFP semifinal games.
But we’re not the only ones. All season, ESPN has been plugging data to spit out bleeps and bloops with a dash of unknown algo rhythms to give us percentage chances of teams making the College Football Playoff. And … now that we know the results on the field, here’s what the “Playoff Predictor” says about the four teams that have the best chance of making the CFP.
Let the debating begin in earnest as we unveil which teams ESPN believes will make the playoff based on the ESPN playoff predictor.