In attempting to identify possible subjects for scrutiny on a given college football weekend, we here at Overreaction HQ must avoid getting too far into the proverbial weeds. There are, after all, moments from individual games all across the landscape that could fill a book the size of ‘War and Peace” if we offered commentary on all of them.
We’ll therefore try to limit ourselves to big-picture issues involving the College Football Playoff contenders as the season heads into its final month. We’ll begin this edition of the top five overreactions in ACC country, where the most significant results of Week 10 took place.
The ACC has no at-large candidates
The losses by Georgia Tech and Miami to unranked opponents leave the conference with no teams in the top 10 of the US LBM Coaches Poll. We reiterate, of course, that the polls are not officially considered by the CFP committee, but they often tend to look quite similar. As such, those results would appear to be quite damaging to the league’s prospects for getting multiple representatives into the 12-team playoff.
It’s not entirely out of the question, however, although Virginia, the conference’s highest ranked team for the moment at No. 11, almost certainly will need to get there via the automatic route. Miami, now two games out of the league lead, is a long shot to win the conference championship. But ironically the Hurricanes might still have the best at-large case should they get to 10-2 thanks to that Notre Dame win way back in Week 1. Georgia Tech could also have an argument, but it would necessitate a non-conference win against Georgia in the regular-season finale.
But there’s one other team in the league nobody is talking about that might be able to assemble an at-large resume in the final stretch. That team is Pittsburgh. The Panthers were 2-2 and largely forgotten at the end of September but have rattled off five wins in a row and still have just one loss in conference. They end their campaign with head-to-head opportunities against both Georgia Tech and Miami, and before that they get their own shot at Notre Dame. Even if they run the table they might still get squeezed out of the league title game since they’d lose a potential tiebreaker with Louisville, and the bad loss to Backyard Brawl rival West Virginia will be a drag on their overall body of work. But a 10-2 mark with that set of wins would at least have to be considered.
This year’s Indiana is – Oregon?
Indiana, an 11-1 team in 2024 with no bad losses but no high-end victories, was the most divisive inclusion in the playoff field last season. There will be no such controversy associated with this year’s Hoosiers, who might be even better, but might there be other examples this year?
Just to be clear, the precedent is now established that an 11-1 team from a power conference is not going to be left out. But that will not silence advocates of other programs from questioning such a team’s actual achievements. There might, in fact, be such a team from the Hoosiers’ own conference that would draw such ire. Curiously, it’s a team universally recognized as being Indiana’s most notable win to date.
The analogy with Oregon isn’t perfect. Should the Ducks get to 11-1, their resume will include November wins against Iowa, Southern California and Washington, all of whom will have been ranked at some point during the season even if they don’t end up in the Top 25 when the field is set. Even so, there will inevitably be complaints coming from the general vicinity of some 9-3 SEC squad that said team played a tougher schedule.
Or … Ole Miss?
Heck, it might even be another SEC member that gets the no-good-wins treatment. The Rebels, via the vagaries of the conference’s scheduling computer, happened to miss most of the other teams in the upper half of the standings this year. The Oklahoma win should hold up well, and the Georgia loss is hardly damaging. Though that lone loss might keep Ole Miss out of the title game, much as the lone setback against Ohio State relegated Indiana to the at-large pool last year.
Again, an 11-1 team will not miss the playoff, especially one from the SEC – and especially especially at the expense of a 9-3 or 10-2 team from the same conference. What happens if the Rebels stumble to Florida or Mississippi State late, however? That kind of passionate debate that fuels this sport, so we accept it as part of the scenery.
The bubbly Red River – Texas
OK, we’ve spent a lot of sentences here already busting on followers of the ‘just means more’ league, so let’s look at a couple of specific cases. There are going to be several 9-3 candidates, and the league’s two newest members who brought their storied Red River rivalry with them seem headed in that direction. Let’s see how they might stack up.
We’ll start with the Longhorns, who would have the advantage of the head-to-head result against Oklahoma in hand. The Ohio State loss isn’t egregious, but the one at Florida is. Assuming a victory against last-place Arkansas, Texas can reach 9-3 by splitting its other two remaining contests, which are at Georgia and home against Texas A&M. A win in either of those would likely suffice, but losses in both would leave the ‘horns on the outside. Should they find a way to sweep those challenging contests, they could find themselves back in Atlanta, but given their numerous near disasters that scenario seems far-fetched.
The bubbly Red River – Oklahoma
The Sooners’ situation is somewhat more complicated. Since their two losses are both in conference and the Longhorns and Ole Miss hold tiebreakers against them, they’re likely limited to the at-large pool unless there’s a whole lot of chaos in the standings above them. They have a chance to create a little of that themselves in a couple of weeks at Alabama, but assuming they don’t win in Tuscaloosa they can still get to 9-3 with home victories against Missouri and LSU.
Would that be enough? It would depend on who else is in their immediate vicinity on the board. A non-conference win against Michigan could be a decisive chip, depending on the contenders. Bottom line? Expect plenty of drama in the coming month in a lot of college towns.