Halfway through the college football season, we bring you bad news: If your team has lost two or more games, it has likely been eliminated from the four-team College Football Playoff. In some cases, if your team has lost one game, it is also a longshot to advance to the postseason.
The good news? When the Playoff soon expands, your team will still be very much alive to make the 12-team field. While under the current four-team format, only about 25-30 teams hold realistic CFP hopes, while the expanded version gives about 50 teams a path to the postseason.
The margin for error is much greater in a 12-team playoff. Take, for example, Texas, which lost its two games without injured starting QB Quinn Ewers. Would the committee leave out an 11-2 or 10-3 Big 12-champion team with a healthy Ewers at QB? That would not happen. Florida State is on a two-game slide, but in an expanded playoff, it would still very much be in the running. The same goes for the likes of Utah, Purdue, Washington State, Florida, Baylor and—gasp!—Notre Dame.
