The tricky thing about college football is that every game means a lot and every game is just one game. Single games tell us so much, and the sport—more than any other in our sphere of attention—functions as a series of hugely important single games. But single games can easily become red herrings. Florida State is not what their September thumping of LSU implied, just as TCU was not ready for Georgia last winter merely because they beat Michigan. So, as teams begin to hit the regular season’s halfway point in earnest, let’s go high level this week with where the playoff picture stands. After that, we’ll have a few takeaways from Saturday. As always, we’re getting a lot of help from our model.
The Best Team in the Country: Penn State, Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan
There are four reasonable answers right now as to who is the best team in the country. There are four national title contenders. Others are in the playoff hunt, and others may eventually win it all (our model says there’s a 2-in-5 chance others eventually *will* win it all), but four teams are, right now, possibly the best team in the country. We’re trying to figure out which it is.
Movelor, our model’s rating system, says it’s Penn State, though it puts the gap between the four at only 1.5 points. The Nittany Lions are still largely unproven, their toughest competition an Iowa team that’s probably decent but is not nationally competitive. Penn State was off this week.
ESPN’s SP+, an alternative rating system of which we think highly, says it’s Michigan, and says emphatically it’s not Penn State. Michigan pulverized Minnesota this week, but they too are largely unproven. Their toughest competition was probably Nebraska.
ESPN’s FPI, a third good system, says it’s Ohio State, and it has Penn State ahead of Michigan but neither within a field goal of the Buckeyes. Ohio State pulled away in the fourth quarter against Maryland on Saturday after trailing 10–0 early. The Buckeyes are more proven than these others, having beaten Notre Dame on the road, but knowing what we now know about Notre Dame, winning in South Bend constitutes meeting expectations for a team capable of a national championship.
The fourth team? Georgia, of course. We posited last week the Dawgs might be worse than Alabama, pointing out that if you took Georgia’s play at face value, that’s what that play implied. Then, Georgia finally woke up, shredding a good Kentucky defense and turning Brock Bowers’s Heisman candidacy into a serious consideration for the first time.
We’ve known all year that Georgia had the talent to be the best. Georgia has the talent, Ohio State has the talent, Alabama has the talent, and Michigan and Penn State don’t. (But if the other three underperform their talent…) We’ve also known Georgia has experience being the best. The roster had a lot of offseason turnover, but more remained than moved on. Our question with Georgia has been why they kept underperforming, and one explanation—discipline, focus, things of that category—had a lot of legal evidence on its side.
In some ways, the discipline theory offered Georgia more upside than, say, coordinator troubles or an issue at quarterback. It might not be as easy to correct, but if corrected, it left plenty of room for upside. Whether that theory was correct or not, and whether this is the mark of Georgia returning to better play or the mark of an inconsistent team, Georgia has shown what heights Georgia can touch. At Georgia’s best, it is still better than the rest of the country. The question is whether it can reach that best.
At the simplest level, then, I think you can conceive of the national championship picture as follows, at its very top: Georgia is there, and one to three teams from the Big Ten are there—whoever gets out of the Ohio State–Michigan–Penn State three-game series alive. Penn State goes to the Horseshoe on October 21st. Michigan goes to Happy Valley on November 11th. Ohio State goes to the Big House on November 25th. There are other dangerous and challenging games mixed in there, but that is the three-game series. Those are the games where it is not about taking care of business and is instead about doing something impressive.
One possibility you may be considering is that in which all three of these teams finish the regular season at 11–1. This is a fringe possibility. A lot has to happen, mostly all three of these teams actually being as close in quality as Movelor currently regards them. But it’s interesting, and it may only take Penn State splitting with Ohio State and Michigan for it to become a relevant question. The first thing to know is that the Big Ten East tiebreaker would most likely belong to Ohio State. It would come down to the conference records of each team’s conference opponents, and the only difference between Ohio State and Michigan’s conference schedules is that the Buckeyes play Wisconsin while Michigan played Nebraska, while Penn State’s cross-division games against Illinois and Northwestern will likely hold it too far back. The second thing to know is that yes, you might see three Big Ten teams in the Playoff. It isn’t likely, but if the ACC and Big 12 leaders fall apart and the Pac-12 does cannibalize itself, it’s possible. I don’t think it would be as bad for entertainment purposes as some fear.
The Playoff Freeway: Oklahoma, Florida State
Behind those four, two teams are currently in the playoff driver’s seat, though with the latter, it’s close.
Oklahoma has a clear shot to winning the Big 12, and even has a loss to give so long as that loss is close enough to not become what Ohio State’s losses to Iowa and Purdue were in 2017 and 2018. It would be advisable for the Sooners to get to 13–0 and not leave it up to doubt, but 12–1 might do it, especially if Texas loses again somewhere else. Oklahoma did a lot for itself this weekend, and it’s absolutely the fifth team in the national championship picture right now, ready to be joined by the winner between Oregon and Washington this weekend. Part of what it did, though—beyond showing it’s inarguably a top-ten team—was saddle Texas with that loss. The Big 12 has one undefeated team left. It’s Oklahoma.
Florida State has a clear shot to winning the ACC, though its likeliest conference championship opponents—UNC and Louisville—are complicating things (more on each of them in a moment). Part of this is that UNC and Louisville indicated loudly this week that they’re better than we previously expected FSU’s conference championship competition to be. Part is that the probability of both contestants having zero losses or one loss in the ACC title game is getting pretty high. That’s a bad situation for Florida State, because Florida State can’t rely on the 2022 TCU path of going 12–0, losing a close game, and getting in by default. Had Kansas State not lost to Tulane last year, Kansas State beating TCU would have put Kansas State in the playoff. This is the risk FSU unexpectedly faces from UNC and Louisville.
Florida State is still in the driver’s seat, but they don’t have as much of an advantage as Oklahoma has, and part of that is this situation we’ve just outlined but part is that Florida State probably isn’t as good as Oklahoma. The Seminoles looked fine again, rolling past Virginia Tech, but they’re not in the territory of those four national title possibilities, and they’re not even in the territory of Oklahoma. Movelor, FPI, and SP+ have these guys 11th, 10th, and 15th in the country, respectively. The systems have Oklahoma 8th, 2nd, and 8th. We thought FSU was equivalent to Oklahoma, but there are two castes here. Further evidence: Our model views Oklahoma as nearly a 50/50 playoff team, but it has FSU’s odds at 1-in-3, below even Oregon.
Dealing With Each Other: Oregon, Washington
The winner of Saturday’s game between Oregon and Washington is going to be in a different situation than Oklahoma and Florida State, but it’s going to leave them in the same spot as those two in terms of playoff probability. Maybe even a better spot. The winner is going to emerge with one loss to give, having illustrated that they’re probably better than the other and therefore the best team in the Pac-12. The loss to give is important, because each still has to play Oregon State, Utah, USC, and Washington State, in addition to a hypothetical Pac-12 Championship opponent from among these six and UCLA. It is so much better a situation, though, to look at that slate and probably need to go 4–1 against it than look at it knowing you need to go 5–0. There are scenarios where even the winner has to go 5–0, but those are unlikely. Oregon and Washington are playing a Pac-12 Championship preview on Saturday.
These eight teams are the core of the playoff picture. Two tiers exist below them, but these are the eight in the thick of things. It is likelier that all four playoff teams will come from these eight than it is that only two of the eight will make it in (the likeliest scenario is close between three of these eight making it and four of these eight making it).
Hanging Around: Alabama, Louisville, North Carolina, Texas
The next category is this group of teams who sit between 1-in-8 likely and 1-in-6, which basically means their chance is the same as that of rolling a six with a single di. Alabama wasn’t underwhelming against Texas A&M so much as they demonstrated that their offensive line is an even bigger issue than we thought and Jalen Milroe is still prone to throwing bad interceptions. Texas could have beaten Oklahoma, but they didn’t, and this is now their seat. Louisville and UNC played great games of football, the Cards handling Notre Dame and the Tar Heels pummeling Syracuse, but we haven’t seen it for long enough from either to say they’re anything better than the 16th-best team in the country (that’s where FPI has UNC—the three systems all have both these teams between 16th and 21st).
For Alabama and Texas, the playoff situation is simple: Win out, and you’re in. Most years, an 11–2 SEC runner up might have a hypothetical shot at this point in the season, but that sort of role is more likely in 2023 to be crowded out by the Big Ten East, where the probability of two teams both finishing with one loss or none is getting high. Both these teams need to win out, and both can, but it’s not likely that either will.
For UNC and Louisville, the playoff situation is probably also simple. Both probably still need to win out. A 12–1 power conference champion will always get consideration, but the ACC is worse enough right now than the rest of the Power Five that it could be an uphill battle. Worse than that, if UNC or Louisville is to lose before the ACC title game, it could be a pretty bad loss. UNC is playing a schedule highlighted by Duke, who might be without Riley Leonard, and Miami, who just almost lost to Georgia Tech and then actually did. Louisville has the Notre Dame win to boost things, and the Cards still play Kentucky, but the situations are similar.
Alive But Hardly: Tennessee, Oregon State, USC, Mississippi, Utah, UCLA, Duke
These are the teams at 1-in-100 or better in our model’s probabilities. We’ll start with the conspicuous member.
USC needed three overtimes to beat Arizona on Saturday, and Arizona is gutsy and gritty and not a bad team, but USC keeps showing us what it is, and the time has come to believe it. Maybe this is a situation where USC has a Georgia–over–Kentucky in it and could rally from here, but the team that beat Arizona State, Colorado, and Arizona by an average of 7.67 points is now set to play Notre Dame, Utah, Cal, Washington, Oregon, and UCLA over the next six weeks. (They have Thanksgiving weekend off, which will be great for their Pac-12 Championship preparation if they can get there.) This is a team with massive defensive problems and an offense that, while good, has only barely been good enough to carry that defense so far. Even with the offense: Everyone knows what they’re getting, and one of those six teams—Utah—knows it can stop it. There is no unknown with USC, and some of the known is pretty bad. SP+ and FPI are higher on the Trojans than Movelor is, and we do put a lot of stock in those systems. But neither thinks USC is within two points of Oregon and Washington, and neither has USC a favorite this weekend in South Bend. Neither do betting markets, which just watched Notre Dame look like it was trying to use a blender to make gravel. Again, maybe USC will come out and win by 20 each of these next two weeks then blow the doors off of Cal, but until they start doing that sort of thing, we’re going to stop pretending they’re something they keep telling us they aren’t.
The other six are a varied crew.
You have Tennessee, who had the week off but looked a lot better post-Florida than it did at Florida and does get what could be a big opportunity in Tuscaloosa if they can beat A&M in Knoxville in the meantime.
You have Oregon State, who struggled defensively against Cal but was never in serious trouble and is going to be favored in each of its next four games before finishing the regular season with a Washington and an Oregon who will each be somewhat different in some way from what they are now.
You have Mississippi, who escaped from Arkansas and doesn’t look good but only needs to spring one upset to finish 11–1.
You have UCLA, who just beat Washington State in an ugly, ugly game but doesn’t have to play either Washington or Oregon this regular season and still only have the loss to Utah on the résumé.
You have Duke, who took the weekend off and probably won’t get past Florida State in two weeks in Tuscaloosa (with a hobbled–at–best Leonard) but will sure shake things up if they do.
You have Utah, whose quarterback’s injuries became the story late last week* but whose offensive issues go beyond who throws the ball, and yet are good enough and have the right sort of schedule (they get USC right after Notre Dame, they get Oregon at home, they get Washington right after Utah) that a run still is possible.
*The extent of Cam Rising’s knee damage was finally revealed, and it seems he probably was never going to have any chance of playing over the front half of the season. The man tore his ACL, MCL, and meniscus in addition to a third knee ligament called the MPFL. He did that in January. It is only October.
The teams are good enough and have done enough and are likely enough to do enough from here that they bear mentioning, but their “it’s possible” is different from those of Alabama and Texas. Even USC is in a meaningfully worse position than Alabama and Texas and Louisville and UNC. They can change that with a win this weekend, and they can really change it with a big win, but we’re in the second year in a row of people blindly agreeing to say USC is great despite USC merely playing like a good team.
Undefeated, For What It’s Worth: Air Force, Liberty, James Madison
The thing which got Cincinnati into the playoff in 2021 was that they beat a team who would have themselves made the playoff had they not lost to Cincinnati. Cincinnati beat a top-ten team on the road and then went undefeated. That’s how you make the playoff as a Group of Five program. There’s no conspiracy. The goalposts only move because the cut line moves naturally. UCF’s best 2017 wins were over Maryland and Memphis. I would have still put them in that playoff, but I have different opinions of what the playoff should be than those do who built it. The committee is told to pick the four best teams, and they don’t really do that, but they do something close and something fairly consistent when it comes to the very top, and there is a path for a Group of Five team to make the field.
This year, that path is really narrow.
For one thing, one of the three remaining Group of Five undefeateds—James Madison—is not bowl eligible, falling victim to the NCAA’s rule which discourages teams from gaming the system and bouncing back and forth between the FCS and the FBS (and tries to stymie FBS inflation, a phenomenon which contributes to power conference schools wanting to break away and form their own new tier). For another, one of them plays in Conference USA, which is the worst FBS conference, one in which Illinois and Cal and Pitt would all be the conference favorite. For a third thing, Air Force didn’t get any Power Five teams on the schedule. Sometimes, this really can be an effect where teams are scared to play the specific mid-major, but that’s probably not the case with Air Force. Their ascent is recent enough and their recent scheduling of power schools is sparse enough to show that this is a choice (they tend to schedule a Power Five school every other year or so, and usually not a great one). It’s a perfectly fine choice, but it means they need a ton of help if the playoff is to become a possibility.
Focusing too much on the playoff with these guys misses the point. James Madison—who was off this weekend—is a spectacularly fun story, absolutely thriving upon their entry to the FBS. Air Force—who was also off this weekend—is a spectacularly fun story, a service academy with a real shot at playing in the Peach Bowl or the Cotton Bowl or the Fiesta Bowl. Liberty—who’s on Conference USA’s weeknight track, beating Sam Houston on Thursday—is a spectacularly fun story, an athletic department dramatically on the rise, only a few years less new to the FBS than JMU is. Undefeated seasons are a reward and an accomplishment in and of themselves. It’s not all about the playoff. ESPN just gets good ratings for the playoff, so they talk about it a lot.
***
That does cover a lot of this weekend’s action, but a few more thoughts:
Eight undefeated teams went down this weekend. Texas was one of them, and we’ve covered them, but to recognize the other seven:
- Maryland gave Ohio State a heck of a three quarters, and maybe we’ll look back on that as another crack in Ohio State’s façade, but it’s equally possible that Maryland is just a solid team. Movelor has them right there with Iowa and Wisconsin, the Big Ten West favorites.
- Kentucky ran into Georgia at the wrong time, but Kentucky probably isn’t actually any better than Auburn or South Carolina. That isn’t intended as a knock on Kentucky. I’m just not sure people realize how respectable Auburn is.
- Wyoming is so lovable, but they’re done a disservice by reporters who try to make themselves look smart by showing off that they paid attention to a primetime game on broadcast television. Wyoming didn’t lose, Wyoming wasn’t undefeated, but we had to put that in to highlight how this was kind of a bad loss for Fresno State. This was one Fresno State had to have, and it was never going to be easy, but failing to take it—coming off games against Kent State and Nevada—was rather damning. We’d hoped Fresno State could be in that special category above and that they and Air Force could play one hell of a Mountain West conference championship game. They still can, but it won’t be an unbeaten showdown.
- Washington State was likewise kind of screwed by the AP. They played a great game against Oregon State, but the team is way more equipped to play spoiler than they are to play contender, and that showed against UCLA. Hopefully they can keep making noise, but they’re a one-loss team without a viable playoff shot, and it’s not because of the schedule. It’s because they’re not good enough. The loss should not have been this much of a letdown.
- Mizzou almost had itself a 6–0 start, and they didn’t get it, and now they’re pointed at a 7–5 finish in their average scenario, but a lot of upside does remain. This can still be a special season in Columbia. That’s the Washington State deal too, but Washington State got a little bit of coronation, and it was hasty. Mizzou never got that, so the letdown isn’t as great.
- I might be really undervaluing Miami—I don’t defer in totality to Movelor, but I reference it heavily, and Movelor has Miami 62nd in the country while FPI and SP+ both have Miami in the top 25—but Saturday felt like confirmation not to take these guys seriously even before they managed to lose the unlosable game. They’ll get chances to prove themselves, starting on Saturday night in Chapel Hill and continuing with dates against Clemson, FSU, and Louisville over the rest of the regular season, but the best realistic hope for this program is to look back in January and say it took a step forward.
- Finally, Marshall went down against NC State. Like Fresno State, they would have been a fun inclusion in the “remaining undefeated teams” section, but they instead find themselves in something like a seven-team Sun Belt race. The Sun Belt is great. It is so much fun, and it is getting better, and it is very natural when you think about it that SEC territory’s mid-major league would be ascending in college football. I love the Sun Belt, and you should too.
It was a week of carnage for the Big 12, with Kansas State’s loss in Stillwater on Friday night a precursor to Iowa State taking down TCU in the Jack Trice Legacy Game in Ames. There are a lot of Big 12 teams with only one conference loss (and West Virginia doesn’t have any!), but K-State is disappointing, Texas Tech missed too many opportunities early to be anything more than a spoiler, TCU has fallen flatter than flat, and Kansas remains a puzzle both with and without Jalon Daniels. It’s really looking like Oklahoma and Texas’s league, and that leaves it with a bad outlook for 2024. Brett Yormark better hope Deion Sanders is as good as we were told he was.
Notre Dame’s exit from the playoff picture was quiet and anticlimactic. The first question with Marcus Freeman, from a distance, is whether he can reach the floor Brian Kelly had going in the last few years. Do that, and you won’t turn out like Tyrone Willingham. The second question with Marcus Freeman, from a distance, is whether he can find a ceiling higher than that which Brian Kelly reached. The answer, this season, is no. There’s always something more to play for in college football, but Notre Dame looks very tired heading into a USC game that is only about pride for the Irish and not at all about national implications.
Iowa and Wisconsin are both looking solid enough, and I personally don’t think Cade McNamara’s injury is as big a deal for the Hawkeyes as some have said (the offense was already atrocious, as has been established). The Hawkeyes beat Purdue. The Badgers beat Rutgers. They now play in what could be the de facto Big Ten West title game on Saturday afternoon in Madison.
Ohio keeps rolling through the MAC. No reason for mentioning that. Has nothing to do with Matt Campbell.
Colorado looked pretty bad against Arizona State, and I do think they’re dealing with a lot of injuries (especially Travis Hunter, as we’ve discussed a number of times), but they also seem more transparent with their injury issues than other programs. I don’t think they’re using injuries as an excuse, but the gap between their injuries and the average probably isn’t gigantic. They’re just not playing all that well. The program still has a long way to go. I will say: It is fun to have something to say about every single Pac-12 game. That is the opposite of how things have been in recent years. What a fun final season that will probably skew all sorts of historic views in incorrect directions.
I don’t know that LSU needed that win over Mizzou, but Brian Kelly sure did. I don’t have any gauge on his hot seat status—I don’t know how crazy is crazy in Baton Rouge—but it was in the conversation, and for at least a week, it isn’t. Now, he gets a good path to reach 6–2 before the Alabama game, and a good path to finish 9–3 overall with only losses to top-20 teams.
At the FCS level, the Big Sky continues to rock. They now have four teams with one loss each, including a national championship contender in Montana State and two other fringe top-five teams in Idaho and Sacramento State. With Northern Arizona continuing its sudden spree of noisemaking (the Lumberjacks made Weber State their latest upset victim), nine of the twelve Big Sky teams are in Movelor’s FCS top 40. Six are in the top 14. The Big Sky is not the MVFC yet, but it’s getting closer, especially with the MVFC’s decision to add Murray State, who stinks at this.
North Carolina Central got a big win over Elon, and an NCCU/FAMU Celebration Bowl is starting to look great if it’s what happens. Over in the Ivy League, Harvard has a fun offense, and with Yale bouncing back to beat Dartmouth on the road, we have reason to hope on Harvard/Yale being an effective Ivy League Championship. Lastly, I don’t know how the Pioneer League awards its championship while St. Thomas is completing its Division I transition, but the Tommies are looking like a good bet to finish atop those standings after beating Butler. This is a reflection on the gap between Division III football and the bottom of Division I, and what it says is that a tournament between the D-2 champ, the D-3 champ, and some of the non-playoff FCS (thinking Ivy League champion, Celebration Bowl champion, Pioneer League runner-up—those kinds of teams) could be cool.
