On Saturday, the college football landscape saw the latest playoff shake-up of the season. One gets the feeling it won’t be the last.
With losses by UCLA and Ole Miss — the previous leaders of two of the Power 5 conferences, along with Notre Dame falling, it leads to the question of whether there will be at least one playoff team with two losses this season.
Both the Pac-12 South and the SEC West are noticeably deep divisions. The only two teams in the SEC West who have not lost are LSU and Texas A&M. While both teams are much improved from last season, they also have still not played any real power teams in conference… and of course, they will play each other, Ole Miss, and Alabama.
Speaking of Ole Miss and Alabama, the Rebels now have a loss alongside the Tide. Combine the depth in the West with the up and coming teams in the East such as unbeaten Florida and one-loss Georgia, and you can see that several losses are waiting to be absorbed by the top tier of the SEC.
Utah is the only unbeaten team in the Pac-12 South, joining USC and UCLA with one loss in the conference. With the depth in evidence there, and with so many divisional matchups yet to be played (in a nine-game conference schedule), going through that half of the conference unbeaten will be nearly impossible… especially if “Good Arizona State” — the team which finally showed up this season against UCLA — decides to stick around.
The top two squads in the Big Ten struggled to beat recent conference bottom feeders from the state of Indiana: Ohio State barely avoided overtime or a do-or-die 2-point conversion (on defense) against the Indiana Hoosiers, while Michigan State squeaked by Purdue, 24-21. Both Indiana and Purdue had the ball at the end of the game with a chance to tie or win, and each lost the ball on downs. Both Ohio State and Michigan State have shown flaws this season. That is not to say that one will not go unbeaten, but plenty of fixes need to be made.
In the other half of the Big Ten, just as we all predicted, both Northwestern and Iowa are unbeaten. That does not seem as though it will hold up, but the winner of their head-to-head matchup later in October certainly has a head start on playing either the Buckeyes or Spartans in the conference title game.
The other school in Indiana, Notre Dame, will also have a hard time getting into the playoff now as well. While the Irish still have an impressive strength-of-schedule profile, the way that the committee values a conference title will work against Brian Kelly’s team. Notre Dame has no margin for error at this point. A two-loss Power 5 conference team would have the advantage over Notre Dame.
With its victory over the Irish, Clemson now meets Florida State atop the ACC standings as the only two unbeatens there. There are several one-loss teams in the conference, but they are not strong contenders. This is a two-horse race, the thoroughbreds both reside in the Atlantic Division.
The strongest showing thus far has been delivered by the conference that was left out last year – the Big 12. The conference has four undefeated teams, with TCU, Baylor, Oklahoma State, and Oklahoma. West Virginia and Kansas State also picked up their first losses this weekend to Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. The overall depth in the Big 12, which creates quality road opponents in various directions, means that both TCU and Baylor could head into their Thanksgiving clash with at least one loss. With recent history serving as an example (the only one we have under this new system), the committee showed that a one-loss team in the Big 12, without a conference title game, is not as strong as others. With Baylor playing another weak non-conference schedule, we may get to see if a one-loss Big 12 “champion” is as good as a two-loss champion from one of the other four Power 5 conferences this season.
It is not a certainty, but if there are two to three Power 5 conference teams going into the playoff selection with two losses, how does this affect teams like Temple, Toledo, or even a non-conference winner in a Power 5 league? If the former two run the table, it would make for quite an interesting decision in how wins and losses are valued.
Saturday continued this trend, but the weeks to come will bring losses to a number of these squads in the top tier of their respective power conferences. Only time will tell what the journey will bring… including the possibility of a multiple-loss playoff team… when it is all said and done.
