There are only four teams in the country left that are undefeated, and one of them is guaranteed to lose this weekend. The way things are headed, we could end up with some really wild situations with the College Football Playoff.
The latest edition of the CFP rankings were released on Tuesday. ESPN college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit was among the analysts to appear on the rankings show, and he talked about a potential “Armageddon” scenario.
The winner of the Ohio State-Michigan game seems to be a near lock to make the CFP. And at No. 6, USC has a clear path to the CFP so long as they beat Notre Dame and win the Pac-12 Championship Game.
According to Herbstreit, the “Armageddon” scenario would occur if USC lost one of its next two games, while Georgia beat LSU in the SEC Championship Game. That would open the door for some teams further down the rankings.
“What if SC were to stumble and Georgia were to knock off LSU. That would be this year’s version of potential Armageddon,” Herbstreit said.
“Now we get into this — who’s left? Who’s left in our discussion? The loser of the Ohio State-Michigan game. Clemson if they win out as an ACC champion. And I don’t know who else you throw in there — Alabama? I guess you could throw them into the discussion. That’s how close we are to the loser of the Ohio State-Michigan game being in a pretty good discussion with Clemson, unless you want to throw Alabama in there as the third team just because of the narrow losses,” he said.
His point is valid.
While losing the rivalry game won’t be a positive thing for either program, the loser of the Ohio State-Michigan game might not be out of the CFP hunt. There is still a lot left to shake out, and there are still plenty of losses to come for all the schools involved. Even TCU, which faces Iowa State next before the Big 12 Championship Game, has no guarantee about winning either of their next two games.
