The third College Football Playoff rankings propelled the event closer to an endgame guaranteed to roil the masses.
Are you ready for five SEC teams?
The conference took a giant leap toward gobbling almost half the bids to the 12-team event when the rankings were unveiled Tuesday evening.
Oklahoma vaulted three spots, to No. 8, following its victory at Alabama. But critically, the 10th-ranked Crimson Tide did not drop below the cut line for CFP inclusion despite sustaining their second loss.
Add No. 3 Texas A&M, No. 4 Georgia and No. 6 Mississippi to the Sooners and Crimson Tide, and the SEC would have five participants if the field were selected today: one automatic qualifier (the conference champion) plus four at-large teams.
Last year, in the first year of the 12-team event, the Big Ten led all conferences with four bids (one automatic and three at-large).
With two Saturdays remaining in the regular season, plus championship weekend, there is time for tumult.
But at this point, the SEC has a firm grasp on the pole position — at the expense of everyone else:
— The Big 12 is staring at another disappointing outcome if No. 5 Texas Tech wins the conference championship.
Both No. 11 BYU and No. 12 Utah are precariously positioned given the lack of schedule juice remaining (e.g., no ranked opponents) and the potential for teams just below them to move up.
The likelihood of the Big 12 collecting a single bid, as it did last year (Arizona State), is increasing by the week.
— The ACC faces a comparable fate with No. 13 Miami as the conference’s highest-ranked team.
Notably, the Hurricanes are four spots below Notre Dame even though they have the same record (8-2) and Miami won the head-to-head matchup.
But committee chair Hunter Yurachek, the Arkansas athletic director who took over as chair last week when Baylor AD Mack Rhoades stepped down, said the teams were not close enough for the head-to-head result to be considered.
The difference in resumes, he said, is rooted in the quality of their losses: The Irish lost to No. 13 Miami and No. 3 Texas A&M, while the Hurricanes lost to two unranked teams, SMU and Louisville.
— And what of the Big Ten? The third installment of the CFP rankings wasn’t much more encouraging for the conference than either of the first two.
Yes, No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Indiana held their ground and are effectively locks for the CFP. But Oregon is No. 7, a tad too close to the current cut line (between No. 10 and 11) for comfort.
If the Ducks (9-1) lose at home to USC this weekend — or at Washington in the season finale — they could fall out of the field.
ESPN analyst Greg McElroy noted the precedent set by the committee’s treatment of Alabama, which fell six spots after losing at home to Oklahoma.
“If you’re Oregon, you better win out,” McEloy said, “because a six-slot slide will have you out of the field.
“They just did it to Alabama. They can do it to you.”
The Trojans (8-2) are currently on the outside looking in. Yes, they moved up two spots, to No. 15, after beating Iowa, but they are behind six teams with two losses.
A victory in Eugene would polish their resume, but would it be enough to climb five positions and gain a foothold in the field?
Put another way: It’s not difficult to envision the Big Ten as a two-bid conference when the field is announced on Dec. 7.
Add the ACC and Big 12 champions, plus No. 9 Notre Dame and the highest-ranked team from the Group of Five (currently Tulane), and that’s six teams.
If the SEC gets five, there would be one bid remaining for a third team from the Big Ten, a second from either the ACC or Big 12 or … yes, we’ll say it … a sixth from the SEC.
There are too many possible permutations to evaluate at this point.
But the most likely outcome, by far, has the SEC owning the day when the field is announced.
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