Chaotic weekend in college football may not change much

November 13, 2016

Upsets reigned supreme in college football yesterday as each of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ranked teams were all knocked from the ranks of unbeaten teams. The shocks started early when Pittsburgh stunned #2 Clemson 43-42 on a 48-yard FG with just 6 seconds to play. Then 4th ranked Washington lost at home 24-13 to resurgent Southern California, while Iowa stunned Michigan 14-13 on another last second FG.

However, despite all the chaos yesterday, the path to the 4 spots in the college playoff still looks pretty locked in, assuming of course that there isn’t another round of upsets. For starters, Alabama, which clinched the SEC West title yesterday, is a lock to make the playoffs as long as the Tide wins either their regular season finale at Auburn or the SEC championship game, likely against either Florida or Tennessee.

Meanwhile, the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 26th will almost assuredly make the playoff as long as they hold serve in their other games. Ironically though, Ohio State which will likely be the #2 ranked team behind Alabama in this week’s CFP poll, needs Penn State to lose to either Rutgers or Michigan State in one of its final two games to get into the Big Ten Championship game, likely against Wisconsin. However, the one-loss Buckeyes are almost assured a spot in the playoff if they beat Michigan State and Michigan in their final two regular season games ahead of the actual conference champion as both Wisconsin and Penn State, the league finalists in that scenario already have two losses.

Clemson is also pretty much assured a playoff spot if they run the table, although the Tigers have been playing with fire that finally caught up with them against Pitt yesterday. For the record, Clemson plays at Wake Forest next week (and a win there clinches a spot in the ACC title game, likely against Virginia Tech) and then finishes the regular schedule at home against South Carolina.

The real loser in yesterday’s chaos was Washington. The Huskies can still win the Pac-12 North with wins over Arizona State next week and Washington State on November 25th in the Apple Bowl, although the Cougars who are actually still unbeaten in conference play won’t be any pushover. However, even if the Huskies win the Pac-12 title outright – and right now resurgent Colorado has the inside track on the South Division’s spot in the conference championship game – they will need some help from elsewhere to get back into the CFP playoff picture because the committee hasn’t been impressed with UDub’s overall strength of schedule.

On the other hand, the real beneficiary of all the chaos could be Louisville which still has only one loss – by 7 at Clemson – and has blown just about every other team they have played out of the water. The Cards have an interesting game this Thursday at Houston and then finish the season with Kentucky.  Should be a really fascinating final 2-3 weeks of the college schedule.