Favorable Prediction Has Arizona Making College Football Playoff This Season
Arizona enters the season with a legitimate chance to make the College Football Playoff.
A preseason top 25 team in the AP Poll, analysts believe the Wildcats could be just as good as they were a year ago when they finished No. 11 in the country.
It's fair thinking from the AP voters, as this team is bringing back many of their top players from last season. Arizona will have stability on their side, too, which isn't common in today's college football landscape.
Maybe it doesn't mean as much as it once did, but having familiarity with each other on and off the field is why teams have often found success.
That reason is exactly why Kyle Bonagura of ESPN predicted Arizona to make the College Football Playoff, earning the No. 10 seed and taking on Texas in the first round.
His reasoning highlighted the importance of stability.
"In the transfer portal era, preseason projections in college football are becoming even more of a crapshoot than they already were. These will be comical to look back at in December. There shouldn't be any major surprises here, it's mostly the usual suspects. Arizona is the team that, by reputation, doesn't belong, but the Wildcats have most of their key pieces coming back from a team that finished on a seven-game winning streak and was No. 11 in the final AP poll. This wasn't by design, but my first-round projections have a regional feel to them, which would be a nice way to usher in the expanded playoff."
Winning the Big 12 Championship Game would give Arizona a guaranteed spot in the CFP, but with how difficult that might be to accomplish in their first season in the conference, they might not have the luxury of earning the automatic berth.
Still, there are pathways for them to get in.
On paper, Arizona will be the more talented team in 10 of their 12 games. One could even argue that they'll be the most talented for all 12, but Kansas State and Utah are high-level, top-18 preseason-ranked teams.
It's safe to say they'll need to beat one of them, at the very least, to get in.
If Arizona were to beat Utah and lose to Kansas State, while also winning the rest of their regular season games before losing in the Big 12 title, that might also get them in.
The worst possible scenario would be losing to both teams, as the committee would likely hold that against them, given they'll be the two best teams they play all year.
JON CONAHAN