College Football Playoff: Which Teams Control Their Own Destiny?

Six teams control their own destiny.  If they win out, they will make the playoff field.  Not even the vagaries of the entirely subjective 13-member selection committee could keep them out.  (Well, they could, but they won’t.)  These six teams are (10-0) Iowa (#1 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings), (10-0) Clemson (#2), (10-0) Oklahoma State (#3), (9-1) Alabama (#4), (10-0) Ohio State (#6), and (9-1) Michigan State (#10). 

Iowa, Ohio State, and Michigan State are all vying to become the Big Ten champion.  Only one of them (at most) can win out, and if one does, that team will make the playoff field.  (Iowa and Ohio State would be undefeated conference champions, and Michigan State would be 12-1 with wins over Michigan, Ohio State, and Iowa.)  Likewise, if they were to win out, Alabama would get a bid as the 1-loss SEC champion, Clemson would get one as the undefeated ACC champion, and Oklahoma State would get one as the undefeated Big 12 champion. 

But don’t bet your house on the Big Ten champ, Alabama, Clemson, and Oklahoma State all winning out.

Teams mostly controlling their own destiny:

Perhaps surprisingly, the (9-1) Florida Gators (#7 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings) might actually control their own destiny, but to be on the safe side, they need Alabama to beat archrival (5-5) Auburn (#43).  Assuming the Gators win out (the assumption for each of the teams under discussion), that would pit Florida and Alabama in the SEC Championship Game, with the general expectation being that the 1-loss Crimson Tide would win and advance to the playoff.  If the Gators instead knock off the Tide, they will be the SEC champions and will go to the playoff in Alabama’s place.  There is no way a 1-loss SEC champ that just upset 1-loss Alabama would be denied a bid.  Even beating 2-loss Alabama might be good enough (but beating 3-loss Mississippi, in the unlikely scenario that Ole Miss gets into that game, probably wouldn’t be).

(9-1) Notre Dame (#6 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings) needs either Oklahoma State (which still has to play 1-loss Baylor and 1-loss Oklahoma) or Clemson to lose.  If both of those teams win out, then the Irish need for either the SEC or Big Ten champ to have two losses.  If Oklahoma State loses (and Clemson wins out and neither the SEC nor Big Ten champ has two losses), the Irish would still have to look out for a 1-loss Oklahoma (currently #9 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings).  But the guess here is that an 11-1 Notre Dame, with (in that scenario) wins over Stanford and USC—one or both of which will likely be playing in the Pac-12 Championship Game—and with its only loss having been on the road against Clemson by 2 points, wouldn’t get passed over in favor of a Sooners team that was defeated by 6-loss (and counting) Texas.

Teams needing some help:

In addition to the eight teams discussed above, each of which needs either no help or not much, there are eight other teams that would seem to have a feasible shot at a playoff berth if they were to win out and things were to break their way.  Aside from winning its remaining games (versus 1-loss TCU and undefeated Oklahoma State), (9-1) Oklahoma (#9) simply needs Stanford to win at home against Notre Dame, two days after Thanksgiving.  In that case, the Sooners should join (most likely) the SEC, Big Ten, and ACC champions in the playoff. 

A loss by the Irish might also be enough to open the door for (9-1) TCU (#12 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings) or (8-1) Baylor (#18), each of which, like Oklahoma, has two big-time games remaining (one versus each other).  A Notre Dame loss would also put (9-1) North Carolina (#20) in contention, as for the Tar Heels to win out, they will have to knock off Clemson in the ACC Championship Game themselves.  (North Carolina could also potentially make the playoff field as the ACC champion by having no Big 12 team sweep its remaining two games and then joining Notre Dame and the SEC and Big Ten champs to make up the 4-team field.)

The other team with the best shot if it could win out—and also the 2-loss team with the best shot—would seem to be (8-2) Michigan (#13).  If Michigan State were to lose to either Ohio State or Penn State (a necessary condition for Michigan to have a path to the Big Ten Championship Game), and if Michigan were to finish by beating Penn State, Ohio State, and presumably Iowa to win the Big Ten title, the Wolverines would most likely get a bid over a 1-loss Buckeyes team they had just beaten (albeit at home) or any 1-loss Big 12 team apart from Oklahoma—and possibly (although not likely) even including the Sooners.  In addition (in this scenario) to their late-season flurry, the Wolverines would be helped by the fact that their two losses were on the road at Utah by 7 points and versus Michigan State after the Wolverines didn’t trail for the first 59 minutes and 59 seconds of that game.

More elaborate, multi-team train wrecks could potentially result in (8-2) Stanford (#14)—or even (8-2) Utah (#15)—getting an invitation as a 2-loss Pac-12 champ, or even (10-0) Houston (#8) getting picked as the undefeated American Athletic Conference champ. 

At this point, the team with the best chance of surviving a loss and still getting into the playoff would seem to be, of all teams, Iowa.  If the Hawkeyes were to lose at (5-6) Nebraska (#56) on November 27 and then come back to beat either Ohio State, Michigan State, or Michigan to become the 1-loss Big Ten champion, their odds of making the playoff field would seem to be quite good.

With all of that said, sit back and enjoy the last three weeks of a riveting regular season of the kind that no other American sport still features.  Think of it as three weeks of November/December Madness—and after that, the bowls and the playoff will still be to come. 

Anderson is co-creator of the Anderson & Hester Rankings, which were part of the BCS throughout its entire 16-year run and are now published by the Dallas Morning News.