Among public universities in the Power Five, none bring in less revenue than Oregon State and Washington State, per Sportico’s pre-pandemic numbers. Located far from population centers, with historically more middle-class students and a lack of long-term success, there is a very real possibility that the Beavers and Cougars are playing for their power conference lives, trying to win enough to keep their brands afloat as the threat of Pac-12 dissolution looms large over college football.
Watching Saturday’s game between Oregon State and USC, a late-night affair buried on the Pac-12 Networks, this existential question felt self-evident. Out-talented, trailing in athleticism, playing for a no-name coach while a recent college football wunderkind paced the opposite sideline, Oregon State competed for its college football life, the happenings shot through a camera placed uncannily close to field level due to the sheer smallness of a stadium which holds less than one quarter the capacity of Michigan’s Big House. With a win, the players would lift their school that much closer to the surface of the water, that much closer to oxygen and time. With a loss, it would be that much further into the murky depths, that much closer to Colorado State.
Oregon State did not win the football game. Oregon State fought valiantly, and Oregon State made Caleb Williams look more like a 19-year-old than like a Heisman candidate, and Oregon State held the lead with two minutes remaining on the clock, but Oregon State did not win the football game. One of the greatest college football games in recent memory ended with a Chance Nolan pass nestling secure against a cardinal-clad chest, the Trojans survivors, the Beavers that much closer to Colorado State. Heartbreak in Corvallis. Relief for USC.
We’ll talk in a moment about what this means for the College Football Playoff and the Pac-12 race and Lincoln Riley and all the rest, but this is not the NFL. There is more at stake in college football than championships. Oregon State didn’t get what it wanted on Saturday night. Oregon State’s way of life fell that much further under threat. But at the Dunkirk of college football realignment, the Beavers fought like hell. There’s a nobleness in that.
Clemson, USC, Oklahoma: Not That Good
We’ve had our doubts for a while about Clemson and USC. Others have had their doubts about Oklahoma. The spin for those first two, as we told you this would go, is that their narrow escapes only prove the mettle of their opponents. That’s…a stretch. Oregon State is ranked 37th in the FBS by Movelor, and 43rd by ESPN’s SP+. Wake Forest is ranked 35th by Movelor, and 42nd by SP+. These are SMU and West Virginia-quality teams, and while Clemson and USC may be good enough to win their conferences (that’s a lot more doubtful for USC, who’s had four weeks to show ratings systems they’re good and still rank just 38th and 25th in Movelor and SP+, respectively), they would each likely be a two-touchdown underdog against Georgia or Alabama or Ohio State right now, and that could be generous. They’re playoff contenders, sure, we can give you that, but they’re most likely of similar quality to 2-2 Notre Dame. Which we will probably see in November, when Notre Dame plays each.
Surprising us, but not shocking the naysayers, was Oklahoma’s performance against Kansas State. We’d been high on the Wildcats in the preseason, but their loss to Tulane last week looked more Nebraska than Baylor, and we thought a lot of Brent Venables’s first-year Sooners. We still do think highly of OU, to be fair—they’re 8th in Movelor, they’re 5th in SP+. But their playoff chances took the biggest linear hit in the country, dropping from roughly one-in-five to roughly one-in-25, per our model. Their path remains clear—win out, hope Kansas State finishes ranked, thank their lucky stars it was a close loss—but that’s a bad path. Their conference championship probability is down around one-in-six, only third-best in the Big 12 and under threat from K-State on the back end. Oklahoma is not done, but their backs are against the wall, and even winning out might not save them.
A Tightened Top Four
The top four teams in the country—Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Michigan—all won, but aside from Alabama, who treated Vanderbilt like they treated Utah State and Louisiana-Monroe, all three loudly challenged perceptions. Ohio State steamrolled a Wisconsin team still in the top thirty of Movelor and SP+. Michigan struggled against a Maryland outfit who can be believed to be good, but who’s accompanied by quick and easy skepticism. Georgia looked like a fringe top-25 team having a bad day against lowly Kent State, who is not at all the MAC favorite. The result? Michigan no longer looks like it’s on par with Ohio State, and Ohio State and Alabama no longer look a step below Georgia. Heading into the week, our playoff probabilities for these four looked like this:
| Team | Make Playoff |
| Georgia | 89.8% |
| Alabama | 60.2% |
| Ohio State | 53.7% |
| Michigan | 44.7% |
This morning, they look like this:
| Team | Make Playoff |
| Georgia | 86.2% |
| Alabama | 71.6% |
| Ohio State | 70.8% |
| Michigan | 34.8% |
It’s a big enough shakeup, even from just four games, that it elevates Alabama and Ohio State close to Georgia in the “Near-Inevitable” category, and it relegates Michigan down to a place astride Minnesota in the “Contender” camp. Speaking of Minnesota…
The Gophers Are Good
Two great things are going on for the Minnesota Golden Gophers. The first is that they are the best football team this school has seen since at least the Kennedy Administration, if not the Great Depression, if not ever. The second is that the path is kind but not easy. They did not draw Michigan or Ohio State in the regular season. They get feisty, dangerous Purdue next week at home, lowering the temperature on the trap game heater by an order of magnitude. They host Iowa, Nebraska’s in shambles, and with Penn State still hanging out with the Contenders itself, Minnesota finishing 12-1 with a better loss and a better best win than 12-1 ACC/Big 12/Pac-12 champions is a straightforwardly possible scenario. There will be plenty more tests, both large and small, but this team is the best in the Big Ten West, and per Movelor and SP+, they’re better than the best in the ACC and arguably all of the Big 12 and Pac-12 as well.
That leaves the top ten in our playoff probabilities looking like this:
| Team | Make Playoff |
| Georgia | 86.2% |
| Alabama | 71.6% |
| Ohio State | 70.8% |
| Michigan | 34.8% |
| Minnesota | 22.9% |
| Clemson | 19.1% |
| Utah | 17.0% |
| Oklahoma State | 14.3% |
| Penn State | 10.8% |
| North Carolina State | 6.6% |
Moving on to league-by-league:
Utah’s the Pac-12 Favorite
I don’t care what sportsbooks are doing to cover their USC futures liability: Utah is the best team in the Pac-12, and with their lone loss a nonconference defeat, their games against Oregon State and USC happening at home, and Washington absent from the schedule, that makes them an overwhelming Pac-12 favorite. They were expected to beat Arizona State, but their playoff probability still nearly doubled after the win, mostly thanks to USC and Oregon keeping expectations medium.
For Washington State, it was a more heartbreaking defeat than Oregon State’s but on a quieter stage, nationally broadcast but against a lesser-hyped foe in Oregon. The Ducks’ own playoff chances remain alive—they’re one of 22 teams with better than a 1-in-100 shot, down from 29 before the weekend—but unless we’re really wrong about Wazzu (Movelor: 40th, SP+: 55th), Oregon remains in that USC zone where we should certainly pay attention to them, but we don’t owe them any real belief.
Washington, who took care of Stanford late Saturday night, remains Oregon State or Washington State in Oregon’s clothing, a respectable team but probably far from excellent. They do have that great path we’ve talked about before, drawing neither USC nor Utah in regular season play, but they’re ok to sneeze at. Ditto for UCLA, who is also 4-0 and also occupies that tier and breezily avoided disaster against Colorado after stopping some hearts with their disaster avoidance against South Alabama. Big one Friday night between the Bruins and the Huskies.
Who Is Clemson’s Biggest Threat?
With Wake Forest now behind the Tigers in the head-to-head race and again, not sensational to begin with, the next team up for Dabo Swinney & Co. is NC State.
One important thing about Clemson is that although their final product appears comparable to last year’s, a fringe top ten team playing in a hard-to-call-power conference, the way they’re getting there is different. Scoring 45 points in regulation against Wake Forest was not entirely the product of Wake Forest’s defensive difficulties. The offense has improved. Unfortunately for Swinney, the defense is a lot worse. Last year, Clemson’s defense kept them in the picture. This year, they’re a susceptible unit. In other words, NC State looks a lot like last year’s Clemson, while Clemson looks a lot like this year’s Cincinnati.
NC State wasn’t a team to watch this weekend in ACC play, taking a nonconference game against UConn and comfortably winning. Neither was Pitt, though the Panthers play across the conference in the Coastal and are a moderate favorite to catch the Tigers in the ACC title game. Instead, hindsight focus is on Miami, North Carolina, and Florida State. For two of those, Saturday went quite badly.
The excitement around Miami was always suspect. It takes more than a press conference to rebuild a football program, and while you can respect Mario Cristobal, the man doesn’t own a functional magic wand. If he did, Miami wouldn’t have been stomped to pieces by Middle Tennessee State, something that does leave them relevant in the ACC (the ACC is bad) but eliminates them from any playoff consideration.
The excitement around Mack Brown made more sense, and it still may be warranted. UNC’s football program isn’t racking up wins, but there are good things happening there. Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, none of those happened on Saturday, as Notre Dame came to Chapel Hill and played like the flawed-but-good team expectations are settling on them to be, leaving UNC a two-touchdown loser in a game that mostly was not as close as two touchdowns.
Florida State, though. Florida State is intriguing.
A thought about Florida State after they beat LSU on Labor Day Sunday was that LSU, playing Brian Kelly’s first game, was going to be mediocre again. LSU might be mediocre. But the win—in a semi-road game, no less—looks pretty good right now, and the Seminoles are already 2-0 in ACC play after winning big on Saturday against Boston College. The next three weeks are division-deciding for them—they host Wake Forest, visit NC State, and host Clemson in a 15-day span—but I’d imagine they’re favorites for the first of those, and they’re close enough in the other two that of all the teams in the FBS, Florida State is currently rated eleventh-likeliest by our model to finish the year in the College Football Playoff.
What Now for the Big 12?
The Big 12 is in big trouble. In addition to Oklahoma losing to Kansas State, Iowa State went down against one-loss Baylor, and while Baylor’s loss at BYU is good enough that the Bears are amidst FSU, NC State, and Oregon in playoff probability, it is better for a conference to have a few undefeated teams than a lot of one-loss teams at a point in the season where everyone should be expected to drop at least one more from here. Worse still, Texas is wholly out of the playoff picture, falling to Texas Tech in Lubbock in a game backup-quarterbacked Texas maybe wasn’t a lock to win (they were only favored by a touchdown), but playoff-caliber teams win comfortably.
The Big 12 isn’t done yet. Oklahoma could rally, as we described above. Oklahoma State remains undefeated, and is believed to be a good team, though they’re still untested heading to Waco next weekend. Through either their current undefeated status (TCU, who beat SMU on the road) or their potential as teams (Baylor, Iowa State), three others are among the 22 at or above that 1-in-100 playoff probability we described above. But in the CFP equivalent of market share, here’s the “expected” number of playoff teams by conference, found by summing each league’s individual-team probabilities:
- SEC: 1.71 teams
- Big Ten: 1.40 teams
- ACC: 0.35 teams
- Pac-12: 0.28 teams
- Big 12: 0.24 teams
- Independents: 0.01 teams
The Big 12 is the third-best Power Five league in terms of the quality of its teams, but it’s in the worst place when it comes to putting a team in the playoff. That’s bad for the league. Especially, to go back to the Oregon State realignment topic from above, at a time like this.
In the other game of note here, Kansas beat Duke, but only by eight points, which doesn’t bode well for the Jayhawks’ legitimacy.
Penn State?
The Nittany Lions kept doing their thing, beating MAC favorite Central Michigan comfortably in Happy Valley. They aren’t as surprising to see up here as Minnesota is, but they’re doing good things, and with so much Big Ten talk covered at the top, there isn’t a lot to add right now.
Good Teams, Bad Chances
Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas A&M all find homes in the top 25 of both Movelor and SP+, but none has a better playoff shot than 1-in-20, because it is hard to make the playoff when you’re in the same league as Alabama and Georgia (especially when you’ve lost to Appalachian State, who as we’ve been warning you is not a good team, blowing an Atlanta Falcons lead to James Madison on Saturday to drop back to .500). The flipside of this is that when you play in the same league as Alabama and Georgia, one huge upset can change the whole script, and each of these guys gets a chance to pull off that upset at least once between now and December.
Tennessee looked vincible against Florida, but they held the lead the whole way through and the final wasn’t as close as the five-point margin appears. That offense is great, that defense is vulnerable, I have no idea how that will translate against Alabama in three weeks, or even really in Baton Rouge after this upcoming week off.
Mississippi clicked but didn’t against Tulsa, going scoreless for the entire second half after scoring five touchdowns in the first two quarters. It’s an ugly result, and it’s fair cause for pause, but with Kentucky coming to town on Saturday in a game Mississippi likely must win to keep their primary and secondary playoff paths alive (the secondary is the 11-1 path), it’s hard to be upset. They reached the wrong final score in the right order.
Kentucky’s struggles against Northern Illinois were more significant. That game was tied at halftime, and like Kent State, NIU is not some secret MAC power. The Wildcats are probably fine, and the winner of this upcoming game is going to both deserve and receive all of the hype as October winds on, but there’s a reason Alabama and Georgia look so unbeatable for teams like these.
Texas A&M isn’t really “alive,” but they did take Arkansas out, or rather, Arkansas took itself out with Texas A&M in the room. The doinked field goal at the end was not the problem. Neither was Texas A&M’s heads-up defensive handoff. The problem was the failed first-and-goal from the 3, and the inability to keep scoring after taking a commanding lead in the game’s first ten minutes.
Is James Madison the Best Group of Five Team?
Cincinnati is the best group of five team, but James Madison might have the best shot at going undefeated, taking down always-exciting App State on Saturday to get to 3-0 in the early days of a schedule that only lasts eleven games. The Dukes are not postseason-eligible, transitioning to FBS, but were they, the race between them and also-undefeated Coastal Carolina for the Sun Belt title would be a great one.
With Tulane falling to Southern Miss, the Group of Five has just the two undefeated teams, and just the one who’s postseason eligible, and with Coastal Carolina’s best opponent probably JMU, there’s no believable playoff path there.
**
Categories, playoff probabilities:
Playoff-Likely
- Georgia (86.2%)
- Alabama (71.6%)
- Ohio State (70.8%)
Contenders
- Michigan (34.8%)
- Minnesota (22.9%)
- Clemson (19.1%)
- Utah (17.0%)
- Oklahoma State (14.3%)
- Penn State (10.8%)
Alive
- NC State (6.6%)
- Florida State (5.6%)
- Baylor (4.5%)
- Oregon (4.5%)
- Tennessee (4.4%)
- Mississippi (4.2%)
- Oklahoma (3.9%)
- Kentucky (3.2%)
- USC (2.3%)
- UCLA (1.9%)
- Pitt (1.7%)
- Washington (1.4%)
- Iowa State (1.0%)
Undefeated
- Syracuse (0.5%)
- Coastal Carolina (0.2%)
- Kansas (0.0%)
- James Madison (postseason-ineligible)
Cotton Bowl Candidates (Movelor Top-25 Teams with Too Many Losses)
- Notre Dame (0.6%)
- Cincinnati (0.2%)
- Texas A&M (0.6%)
- Wisconsin (0.2%)
- Arkansas (0.5%)
- Air Force (0.0%)
- Kansas State (0.3%)
- Iowa (0.4%)
