It’s the time of year when we are splitting hairs to determine which one-loss teams make our expanded College Football Playoff mock bracket.
For the first time since we started this weekly post, our at-large selections are not all undefeated, as Oregon, Wake Forest and Alabama advance into the bracket despite defeats.
It was a painstaking call to add the trio into the field over teams like USC, Oklahoma State and Illinois, but the determining factor was the quality of losses. How can a loss have quality? The Ducks (vs. Georgia), Deacons (Clemson) and Crimson Tide (Tennessee) lost on the road against teams within our Top 5. That’s not the case for any other one-loss squads. Illinois (vs. Indiana) and Kansas State (Tulane) have the worst losses. While USC dropped a game Saturday to Utah, the Utes have two losses despite being scrappy at home. Penn State has the best loss of those left out (at Michigan), but the game was a rout.
Then, there’s Syracuse, the only undefeated team not advancing into our bracket (oh, the agony). Take a gander at the Orange’s strength of schedule, which ranks 118th nationally in the Sagarin ratings, and you’ll understand why. Their best win was Saturday’s victory over an N.C. State team that was missing QB Devin Leary.
The selection committee is not supposed to consider conference affiliation when seeding, but we'd be fools to think like that. Our bracket attempts to divide the wealth as best we could, with two teams apiece from the Pac-12, ACC and Big Ten and four from the SEC (remember, it just means … more).
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Everyone else? The Volunteers vault into our Top 4 after their upset of Alabama and we are penciling them in as our SEC champion. Yes, we know the Vols play at Georgia on Nov. 5 and might have to go through Alabama again in the SEC title game, but keep in mind we are seeding off of current results.
As a reminder, we are using the exact expansion model CFP executives adopted in August. The 12-team model features automatic qualifiers to the six highest-ranked conference champions and six at-large selections to the next six highest-ranked teams. The four highest-ranked conference champions receive byes to the second round (independents are not eligible to receive a bye), and the four first-round games are played on the better seed’s campus. Six bowls host the quarterfinals and semifinals in a rotation, with teams assigned to their league’s historic bowl affiliation.
Orange Bowl
1. Clemson (ACC champion)
Sugar Bowl
2. Tennessee (SEC champion)
Fiesta Bowl3. Ohio State (Big Ten champion)
Rose Bowl
4. UCLA (Pac 12 champion)
Semifinals: Peach (1 vs. 4) and Cotton (2 vs. 3)
At Athens, Ga.
5. Georgia (SEC at large)
12. Tulane (AAC champion)
At Ann Arbor, Mich.
6. Michigan (Big Ten at large)
11. Wake Forest (ACC at large)
At Fort Worth, Texas
7. TCU (Big 12 champion)
10. Alabama (SEC at large)
At Oxford, Miss.
8. Ole Miss (SEC at large)
9. Oregon (Pac-12 at large)
