Heading into championship weekend, eight teams — Georgia, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, Florida State, Texas, Alabama and Ohio State (barely) — can still reach the College Football Playoff. That’s the highest there have been in the 10-year CFP era.
Only three times have there been seven, in 2015, 2017 and 2019, but even in those, one or more teams would have needed to pull an unlikely conference championship upset. What stands out about this year’s field is the seven teams playing this weekend are all reasonable picks to win their respective title games. It wouldn’t take much to unleash chaos.
Including what would arguably be the toughest decision the committee has ever faced: Alabama beating Georgia, and the No. 4 seed coming down to a 13-0 Florida State team without its star quarterback or the 12-1 two-time defending national champs.
Even discarding the non-possibility of Iowa upsetting Michigan (you can throw this back in my face if the Hawkeyes pull off a 3-2 win), there are 16 possible combinations of results involving the ACC (Florida State-Louisville), Big 12 (Texas-Oklahoma State), Pac-12 (Washington-Oregon) and SEC (Georgia-Alabama) championship games. Below, I predict how the committee would rank the top five teams after each set of results.
For these purposes, I’m predicting the committee on Tuesday drops Ohio State from No. 2 to No. 5 following its 30-24 road loss to Michigan, behind the four undefeated teams but highest of the one-loss teams, but knowing any of Oregon, Texas or Alabama would pass the Buckeyes if they win this weekend.
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