Path To The Playoff: Teams that will be told they can make the College Football Playoff (but really can’t)
17. & 18. Marshall Thundering Herd (7-0), Coastal Carolina Chanticleers (8-0)
Both of these teams are in the exact same boat. To have any prayer of getting into the College Football Playoff discussion …
– One of them has to lose, and the other has to roll through the rest of its slate in dominant fashion.
– Coastal Carolina: at Texas State, Liberty, at Troy, and then it has to get to and win the Sun Belt Championship.
– Marshall: Rice, at FIU, and then it has to get to and win the Conference USA Championship.
– BYU and Cincinnati have to lose.
– There has to be total chaos in the Power Five championship games. There has to be multiple multi-loss champions.
Will Marshall or Coastal Carolina Make The College Football Playoff? Not a chance.
15. & 16. BYU Cougars (9-0), Cincinnati Bearcats (8-0)
Scream and yell all you want about how unfair the system is, but we’re all adults here. We can speak openly.
A Group of Five program – and this applies to BYU in this case, too – can’t get into the College Football Playoff without at least one big win over a great Power Five program, and even then …
A Group of Five program can’t get into the College Football Playoff.
Of course it’s possible, the committee can do whatever it wants, but it would take something insane for that to happen this year considering that neither program will have played or beaten a Power Five team.
– One of the two programs has to win out, and it would help if the other lost along the way.
– Cincinnati: at Temple, at Tulsa, (likely) American Athletic Conference Championship.
– BYU: San Diego State.
– At least three of the five Power Five conference champions need to have multiple losses, and even then it would be tough unless the champs have more than two defeats.
HOWEVER, and this is the wild-card that can change all of this …
– Cincinnati and/or BYU have to schedule and obliterate at least one brand name Power Five program. The Pac-12 has said it’s open to its teams scheduling non-conference games, but that’s not quite as easy as it might appear.
As this is being written, reportedly, Washington has reached out to BYU to play, but BYU wants to wait until after the first rankings come out – even though there’s NO chance BYU gets in without a blowout win over a Power Five program.
Will BYU or Cincinnati Make The College Football Playoff? Nope. There’s a hard ceiling on how close Group of Five programs can come without playing a full Power Five schedule.
Path To The Playoff
– The desperate long shots
– Teams that can make the CFP … with a LOT of help
– Teams that can make the CFP … with a little help
– Teams that control their CFP destiny
– 4 most likely teams to make the CFP