Welcome to Before The Snap, For The Win’s college football show where we’ll break down the sport’s trending storylines, examine each week’s biggest matchups and track the College Football Playoff and Heisman Trophy races.
We’re one step closer to chaos after Week 9 of the college football season, and chaos is so much fun — assuming your preferred team isn’t on the wrong end of it.
Oklahoma lost and joined Georgia as another top team with serious College Football Playoff potential with a blemish on its resume. One loss certainly doesn’t destroy the path to the playoff for these teams — or for others like Oregon or Utah — but it does make it a bit more difficult.
And actually, Oklahoma’s first loss and Notre Dame’s second is good news for the Ducks and Utes as they hope to emerge as one-loss Pac-12 champs, along with the SEC and Big Ten conferences looking to get more than one team in the playoff.
Going into Week 10, Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama and LSU have the top-4 chances to make the College Football Playoff, according to ESPN’s Playoff Predictor. And Penn State is not far behind with the fifth-best chance.
So what if Oklahoma or Baylor win the Big 12 with no more than one loss? What if Oregon or Utah wins out and is a one-loss Pac-12 champ?
What if both those things happen while the SEC and Big Ten each have a one-loss team with a solid schedule that didn’t win the conference? This scenario and various versions of it have potential for some heated debates.
But that’s a lot of what-ifs floating around right now, and we’ll have a couple answers when Alabama plays LSU in Week 11 and when Ohio State eventually plays Penn State in Week 13.
For the selection committee, the question is: Does a one-loss team that’s not a conference champion in the SEC or Big Ten have a better resume than a one-loss conference champ from the Pac-12 or Big 12? And which teams had the worst losses? Was a team’s lone loss close and to the eventual conference champion?
Obviously, we have no idea how this is going to play out. But we’re on track for chaos, especially if a few more upsets come into the mix.
