Corvallis: It’s where Pac 12 dreams go to die. It seems like every time a team is well on its way to competing for a national championship, a road game against Oregon State makes everything go haywire. That was true for Arizona State, who missed out on their second chance in school history to compete for a national title when they got caught napping against a fired-up Beavers team. Arizona State still isn’t dead yet (a two loss Pac 12 champ is probably next in line if we see chaos in the Big XII and Florida State gets upset in the ACC Championship Game) but man this had to hurt. Oh, and Oregon takes their own trip to Corvallis in two weeks. We can’t wait.
So where does the playoff picture stand now, with only two weeks left before conference championship weekend? Florida State, Oregon, and Alabama are now the only three teams that control their own destinies. They are locks to be in the inaugural College Football Playoff if they win out. There is no question about any of those.
So what about that fourth slot? Current logic dictates that it will go to one of the two Big XII schools with one loss. Right now TCU is ahead, though many expect Baylor to close that gap by season’s end. Honestly, though, it’s becoming more and more difficult to see why either of those two are considered significantly ahead of Ohio State. The strength of schedule numbers are pretty similar for all three teams and getting closer to each other every week. Ohio State’s loss to 5-5 Virginia Tech is bad, but it isn’t significantly worse than Baylor’s loss to 6-4 West Virginia. TCU has the best loss of this group, but their best win is over 7-3 Oklahoma, who barely sneaks into the back end of most rankings this week. There is very little to separate these three teams and it will be a tough judgment call for the selection committee either way if both win out.
Then we throw Mississippi State into the mix. If MIssissippi State wins the SEC, there is no question that they are in. Also, if Alabama loses in the SEC Championship Game, Mississippi State probably gets in as a one-loss representative from the SEC instead of the actual champion from the East. But what if Alabama and Mississippi State both win out? Alabama is in, as we already said. So how does Mississippi State’s resumé stack up to the three teams (Ohio State, Baylor, and TCU) we discussed above?
Honestly, it’s right in the middle. Mississippi State’s strength of schedule will probably end up somewhere in the mid-30s, very slightly better than Ohio State’s or TCU’s. When you’re playing in the SEC West, managing an SOS in the 30s says something serious about your other six games. All four of Mississippi State’s nonconference opponents are in the bottom 40 of FBS football (or in FCS). Mississippi State’s two cross-divisional opponents, Vanderbilt and Kentucky, are the bottom of the SEC East and both are in the bottom half of college football (Kentucky may actually sneak into the Top 60, but the point stands). Mississippi State’s best win in this scenario is 3-loss (at best) Ole Miss and every other victory of theirs would have at least four losses. They would have the best loss of this whole group, but the committee already showed us in the case of Notre Dame that teams need good wins, not close losses to top teams.
Which brings us to the biggest not-talked-about headline of the week. Namely, the SEC West imploded this week. It took 12 weeks for the undisputed best division in college football history to collapse, but collapse they did. Auburn and Texas A&M both lost cross-divisional games to teams with questionable resumés. Georgia might still be ranked high by many, but I’m still not sure why. Georgia has beaten exactly two ranked teams now and have two bad losses to complement that. And, frankly, Missouri being ranked is mind-boggling. They have exactly two wins over teams with less than five losses, one of which is against Toledo. They also have that loss against Indiana, a bottom 40 team in the country, that should far outweigh those wins.
Those losses hurt the entire SEC West because everyone in that division has a win over other teams in the division in a way that sets up a perfect head-to-head circle. When one of the teams in that circle picks up a bad loss, it weakens the whole circle. Arkansas beating LSU also hurt the division. Arkansas may have been the best 4-5 team in history according to many, but they were still a 4-5 team and that loss still hurt. LSU is now unranked, which makes that a pretty bad loss for Ole Miss.
Now, the SEC West is still the best division in college football. There really can be no question about that. But they are not as far-and-away ahead of everyone as they were a week ago. Before, there was a common perception that a one-loss SEC West runner-up is a near-lock for a second CFP spot, especially once Baylor lost to West Virginia and Michigan State lost a second game. Now, though, it’s hard to say that about the division. The SEC West may only have four ranked teams by season’s end and only three with less than four losses. That’s not enough to guarantee a second spot in the CFP. It might earn one anyway, depending on how the rest of the country plays out. But it’s not the same as it was a week ago. This was a bad week for the SEC West no matter how you slice it.
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