College football heads towards its Championship Week with one more bout of lunacy. The ACC took the big dive this week, with a loss for both Miami and Clemson. Miami’s loss to unranked Syracuse especially seems to have sealed their fate in missing the College Football Playoff completely. Meanwhile, it has all but guaranteed the Big 12 Champion will be allowed to dance.
Now, the rest of the college landscape locks in on games that will decide seeding, and the last few spots up for grabs in the 2024 College Football Playoff. Will the selection committee even consider the outcome of this coming week? Who will miss the playoffs, and who will be hosting the first round games? We attempt to answer all these questions today in five sections.
But first, let’s start with the teams we know will be in the College Football Playoffs, no matter what happens next week (in no specific order):
- Oregon
- Ohio State
- Penn State
- Indiana
- Notre Dame
- Texas
- Tennessee
- Georgia
To see what needs to happen, or not happen, for Boise State, SMU, and the others to lock up their claims, we look at three pivotal scenarios below.
College Football Playoff Scenarios For Bubble Teams
Boise State Loses the Mountain West Championship
The first scenario to understand is perhaps the most dower for fans of parity and inclusion, but it is the simplest, so we will start there. If Boise State loses its last game of the season, it will expose a harsh but obvious double standard during this Championship Week. They cannot afford even one more loss due to their weaker schedule. While a team like Georgia won’t be punished for their potential third loss, a second loss to even a ranked UNLV will be curtains for the Broncos. If Boise State loses, they’re out, and it means the path for everyone else opens up.
Without Boise State, it means the ACC and Big 12 winners are guaranteed to be included in the playoff’s top four seeds. Even a three-loss Clemson team would get in instead because they would be the champions of a much stronger conference overall and would’ve just beaten a comparatively much better foe to earn it in SMU. Boise State out also ensures two other likely outcomes: Alabama and SMU get in. Alabama will be mentioned a lot in this article, and they should actually be feeling pretty confident about their chances of appearing in the playoffs, at this point. I will say there’s only one route I see them missing at this juncture, but a Boise State absence means a combo of Big 12 Champ, ACC Champion Clemson, SMU, and Alabama in the last spot OR Big 12 Champ, ACC Champion SMU, Alabama and likely South Carolina’s only way in at this time.
Alabama is in regardless of these two scenarios as the best remaining team over either South Carolina or Miami. SMU is in regardless here because even with a second loss in the ACC Championship they’ve built too good a resume to be eliminated in the championship week by a committee that seems hesitant to hold this week against people. Well, hesitant towards anyone not named Boise State. Good luck Broncos, no pressure.
SMU Wins the ACC Championship
Ok, now let’s enter my happy place where we can say the blue-field weirdos in Boise win their game. Now, the only game to have extending implications for inclusion in the College Football Playoff is the ACC Championship. With the loss of Clemson and Miami last week, an SMU win means only one ACC team would enter the College Football Playoffs. Clemson will obviously be eliminated with their fourth loss, and Miami’s two losses to Georgia Tech and Syracuse are likely disqualifying.
Miami would have a better case, if not for who they will be compared against. Do you take Miami’s two losses over a two-loss Big 12 champion in either Arizona State or Iowa State? I don’t think so, as both have better wins and better losses, and the committee will want to reward their conference championship if possible. Or, is a two-loss Miami more compelling than a 3-loss Alabama? While some haters can argue that, the committee will not. If SMU and Boise State win, the last two spots in the playoffs will go to the Crimson Tide and the winner of the Big 12, no doubts here. I would consider this the “chalk pick” as I think this will match the rankings the committee will give entering our final week.
It would also be a very deserving three-seed for the SMU Mustangs who hopefully will get some much-deserved respect once people realize they finally can stop waiting for either Miami or Clemson to catch what has been a consistently good team all year.
Clemson Wins the ACC Championship
Dabo damns us all to hell. If the Clemson Tigers win the ACC Championship and Boise State wins the Mountain West, we’ve arrived at what is in my opinion the biggest area for possible chaos left in our options. First, the unchaotic of it all. The Big 12 champion is in. You’ve noticed now in all my options this is a common theme, and I wanted to show you the math on this, but it seems the winner of this conference remains no matter what happens next Saturday. While there may be some arguments, as we’ve shown in each section, no one’s reasoning will be more compelling than either Arizona State or Iowa State next week in any scenario. The loser of that game is also clearly eliminated, so we do have a true elimination game on our hands in the Big 12.
Now, for what you all came for, the bullshit Dabo Swinney’s team could cause. If Clemson wins the ACC, there are three possible routes I think the selection committee could go with, which I will explain in the order from what I perceive to be least to most likely.
College Football Playoff Scenarios is Dabo Causes Bullshit
First, and again the least likely in my opinion, is the committee chooses not to bring the ACC to the dance at all. They could say that with their three losses, Clemson’s resume is just to blemished and SMU’s chariot finally turned into a pumpkin, meaning they should just stick with the Big 12 champion, and then both Alabama and South Carolina from the SEC. This choice is certainly not impossible, but my main reasoning against it is I think SMU’s year is just too strong for that. I’m not sure how much credit Clemson will get for that win, but SMU would have two losses to two top 20 teams only and that seems like a better argument than South Carolina’s outright, and maybe even Alabama. And then, would the committee really discount the ACC winner at the last hurdle when it’s proven its competitiveness in the latest weeks with more parity from Syracuse and Georgia Tech? I think not.
Option 2, the safe choice. The committee pretends nothing happened. They put SMU in the playoff as a non-conference winner in the last spot in the field, and otherwise change nothing from the outcome if SMU wins their last game. While this may seem like the outcome worthy of the most scorn, there’s a big piece of me thinking this is what the committee will do. There are many signs that the committee doesn’t want the conference championships to be THE reason a good team is eliminated. So, going into the week with a “SMU is in no matter what” mindset seems really on-brand for what the committee has said and done in the past. The pros of this outcome are that it’s the “eye-test pick.” If you don’t overcomplicate the choice, the Big 12 winner, Alabama, and SMU are all more consistent and competitive choices over even a champion Clemson. The con of this choice that I’ve wrestled with is that means saying the ACC Championship outright doesn’t matter, and SMU is clearly more deserving than a team they just lost to. Again, the committee has done this in the past with a smaller field. But this year, I think the committee has shown that if forced, they will push the big red button.
Option 3, Dabo gets his way. If Clemson wins the ACC Championship, I have come to think that the committee has been consistent enough in their praise of the ACC that they will reward the Tigers with a playoff spot. The committee has decided each week that the ACC is better than the Big 12 or Boise State. They were overly lenient with Miami and even seemed likely to put three ACC teams in if the Hurricanes and Tigers had done their jobs this last week. And as previously mentioned, some of the lesser ACC teams have looked even better this last week, making it seem silly for the committee to just not include the conference champion.
Similarly, if the conference is so good, what does that say about SMU? SMU’s only loss is to what may be a top-15 finishing BYU, and who beat every tough opponent they’ve faced this year. They will be ranked in the top eight this week and, as mentioned above, dropping them all the way out at this point even with a loss to what would be a vindicated Clemson would be unfair to their showing. But with that said, how could you punish Clemson for beating that good of a team? If Clemson is going to get in, it’s time to show how.
Let’s finally reveal the question the committee will actually be answering: Clemson or Alabama? I hate to say it, but that’s what it will come down to. The College Football Playoff Committee has shown they don’t care at this point about the three-loss line. Georgia will be in even with a third loss, and Alabama will likely be ranked in the top 12 this week to start even with three losses, as they are in the AP rankings at the time of writing. So, if three losses aren’t an issue, the ACC is in no matter what, the Big 12 is in no matter what, and SMU is in no matter what, it’s all just ‘Bama or Clemson. Unfortunately, I think the committee has already answered that for us. Clemson came into this week ranked above Alabama, and even though they lost again, that would be diminished with an ACC Championship. I don’t think the committee decides to take Alabama over a two-loss SMU, and I don’t think the committee takes a three-loss team who will finish outside the top three of their conference before they take a Power-4 champion. To put it plainly, if Clemson wins the ACC and Boise State wins the Mountain West, I think it’s the one way at this juncture Alabama is eliminated from the playoffs. The committee will choose to honor five conference champions and not punish SMU for their championship week loss.
In the first year of the 12-team playoff, I think it’s clear the committee wants to broadcast a diverse pool of teams. I also think it’s exactly the kind of BS Dabo would get to land in his lap. Lord help us all.
