Playoff Pursuit: The Race for the Big 12 is Wide Open, Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State Look Strong in the Big Ten, Alabama and Texas Headline the SEC

Lesson learned: The Big 12 is wide the hell open, and looks more and more like a one-bid league for the 12-team College Football Playoff.

Meanwhile, the Big Ten and the SEC continue to look like the strongest conferences in the sport and will probably have at least three teams each in the 12-team field. The ACC has two strong favorites remaining at the top, but perhaps there’s a darkhorse or two that could emerge. 

As we’ve done every Tuesday throughout the season, we’re taking a look at the weekly CFP outlook based on the results available to us at the time. Starting this week, we’re making our own weekly projections for the 12-team field at the end of the article. But first, here’s what it would look like if we went off the Associated Press Top 25 Poll.

If the Week 6 AP Poll seeded the 12-team Playoff:
NEW: Iowa State
Back: Michigan
Out: Ole Miss, Utah pic.twitter.com/RfvsBQIFFk

— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) September 29, 2024

Before we get to our projections, here’s a conference-by-conference breakdown of who could be in contention for a CFP spot. As you’d expect, the categories and schools in them are subjective. In case you need a reminder, the 12-team CFP format is five conference champions (including one Group of Five team) and seven at-large selections.

Big Ten

Conference contenders: Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State
Teams with a clear path to an at-large: Michigan, USC
Darkhorses: Indiana, Iowa, Rutgers
Darkest of darkhorses: Nebraska, Illinois

Breakdown: Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State look head and shoulders above the rest of the league right now, with the Buckeyes having the highest ceiling of that trio, but each are going to be tested mightily over the next few weeks. 

Michigan faces a five-game stretch from hell which includes road matchups against Washington and Illinois, a rivalry game with Michigan State, a home contest against Oregon and a road matchup against upstart Indiana. It’ll have to win all but one of those games to have a chance at the postseason heading into its last two games.

Iowa can afford to lose this weekend against OSU, but then will need to win out to have any hopes at the postseason, which would probably include a Big Ten Championship Game appearance. Indiana faces B1G bottom-feeder Northwestern this week then has a stretch against Nebraska, Washington, Michigan State, Michigan and Ohio State. Rutgers will probably be favored in all but two of its remaining games, but the Scarlet Knights can’t afford to rest on their laurels.

Nebraska needs to start piling up wins and faces a tough test against Rutgers this weekend. Fresh off its first loss, Illinois has Purdue this weekend, but then faces Michigan and Oregon back-to-back.

SEC

Conference contenders: Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and still Georgia
Teams with a path to an at-large: Missouri, Ole Miss
Darkhorses: LSU

Breakdown: Alabama secured a huge win over Georgia Saturday that will give it a leg up in any potential tiebreaker scenarios for the championship game, but both of these teams remain squarely in the hunt. 

Texas has an off week and will get Quinn Ewers back from injury for the Longhorns’ contest against Oklahoma on Oct. 12. It wouldn’t be surprising if we find ourselves looking at a Texas vs. Alabama conference title game matchup.

Tennessee gets tuneups against Arkansas and Florida before facing off against Alabama in what could be another SEC classic. Missouri hasn’t looked dominant in its non-conference schedule, but the Tigers are undefeated and still have a favorable schedule. 

The same could have been said for Ole Miss until last week’s loss to Kentucky. Yet the Rebels still could put together a late run and secure an at-large bid, though managing that with a loss gets much harder considering LSU and Georgia are still on the schedule. 

LSU has an off week to prepare for Ole Miss on Oct. 12, which will probably be a loser-out game.

ACC

Conference contenders: Miami, Clemson
Darkhorse conference contenders: Louisville
Darkest of darkhorses: Pittsburgh, Duke, SMU

Breakdown: Miami should thank its lucky stars Virginia Tech’s final play of the game wasn’t ruled a catch, but the Hurricanes stay undefeated for now. Clemson still looks deadly in conference play and probably won’t be challenged again until Nov. 2 against Louisville. 

I was just about ready to dismiss Duke’s likely fluky 5-0 start, but the Blue Devils’ only likely surefire loss on the schedule remaining is Miami. You never know. 

Speaking of you never know, Pittsburgh doesn’t have to face Miami or Clemson in its conference schedule. SMU is scoring points at will in the last few games, but we’ll find out just how much of a conference contender the team is against Louisville this week. 

Big 12 

Probably the favorite: Iowa State 
Teams that have a shot of making the Big 12 title game: Utah, Kansas State, BYU, Colorado, Texas Tech, Arizona, UCF

Breakdown: I’m going to save a lot of time and words and break this down in the simplest terms possible. This conference is extremely wide open. Like, wide open enough that it wouldn’t be surprising if a team made the conference championship with three conference losses.

Every school listed above has at least one exploitable flaw. For example, Kansas State can’t stop turning the ball over, Utah quarterback Cam Rising’s health remains uncertain. BYU and Iowa State’s offenses are effective enough but still a little suspect. You get the point. 

This is almost assuredly a one-bid league, but that doesn’t mean the conference race won’t be fun to watch.

Group of Five

Teams who could earn the G5 spot: Boise State, UNLV, Liberty, Memphis, Toledo, James Madison, Navy, Army

Breakdown: Ashton Jeanty is a legit Heisman candidate and could propel Boise State to a playoff berth if the Broncos win out. At this point, Boise State and UNLV are probably in the driver’s seat for the Group of Five bid, and they’ll face off on Oct. 25 in what could be the G5 game of the year. 

Liberty’s game against App State getting canceled isn’t going to help an already soft Flames schedule. Pretty much the only path for the Flames getting into the CFP is an undefeated season and a bunch of chaos.

James Madison is the Sun Belt’s best chance with a Power Five win over North Carolina. Memphis and Toledo might need to win out to have a chance. And how about 4-0 Army and Navy making things interesting in the American Athletic Conference?

Playoff bracket prediction

For our playoff predictions, we’re going to combine the results available to us and our own projections for how the rest of the season could play out.

Conference champs

• No. 1 Ohio State 
• No. 2 Texas 
• No. 3 Miami 
• No. 4 Iowa State

First round

• No. 5 Alabama vs. No. 12 Boise State (winner faces Iowa State)
• No. 6 Oregon vs. No. 11 Missouri (winner faces Miami)
• No. 7 Georgia vs. No. 10 USC (winner faces Texas) 
• No. 8 Penn State vs. No. 9 Tennessee (winner faces Ohio State)

First teams out

• Clemson
• Notre Dame

Breakdown

In our first initial playoff projection that will probably last all of one week before we crumple it up and try again, we have OSU, Texas, Miami and Iowa State winning their respective leagues, earning the top four seeds in the tournament. 

I went with Alabama as the SEC runner-up facing a 12-1 Boise State team, and B1G runner-up Oregon facing No. 11 Missouri. The Tigers don’t pass the style test right now, but if they can beat Texas A&M this week, the schedule is soft enough for them to go 11-1 with a loss only to Alabama.  

We have Georgia as the No. 7 seed facing No. 10 USC, who I envision losing to Penn State but winning every other game they play the rest of the season.

No. 8 Penn State and No. 9 Tennessee would square off with the winner getting No. 1 Ohio State in the quarterfinals.

Getting the elephant in of the room out of the way, yes, I’m aware there’s a whopping five SEC teams in the field. Keep in mind, that’s not how I WANT to seed it, I just envision that’s what the committee is going to do if it can get away with it. 

And in this scenario they could, considering we’re projecting Notre Dame to finish at 10-2 with losses to NIU and USC, Clemson to go 11-2 but not get the benefit of the doubt because of the schedule and a blowout early season loss to Georgia.