Predicting the College Football Playoffs: Reflections on Week 1

How the earliest games are already shaping Nebraska’s chances for making the playoffs.

Aug 31, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; Notre Dame Fighting Irish cornerback Christian Gray (29) tackles Texas A&M Aggies defensive back Trey Jones III (9) in the fourth quarter at Kyle Field. Maria Lysaker-USA TODAY Sports / Maria Lysaker-USA TODAY Sports

The expansion of the playoffs to 12 teams this year will bring with it many changes, and some will not be obvious at first. Since Nebraska fans have a well-deserved reputation for being a) among the most knowledgeable of fans, and b) ridiculously optimistic, I thought that it would be fun to begin the season tracking where we stand in line for a playoff bid, who is our chief competition for a spot, etc. Obviously, if Nebraska doesn’t win a lot of games, it’s all an exercise in futility, but so was rooting for Nebraska for the past several years, yet here I am, still filled with hope.

Most fans are aware of the general changes that have come with switching from a 4-team playoff of 2 rounds to an expanded 12-team playoff with 4 rounds, but there are a lot of details that are either hidden in plain sight or have yet to be revealed as circumstances change and more specific situations develop. If you’re at all like me, as a fan the first thing I did was start thinking about what circumstances would transpire for Nebraska to make the playoffs. Yes, we all understand that we should want to have a winning season and go to a bowl game first, but everyone will be curious, regardless, so here we go….

The larger number of teams involved will lead to many more teams being in consideration for far longer into the season, and that already tells us that we can probably enter the month of November at 6-2 and still be in the hunt for a playoff spot. Of course, the same is true for almost every other team, so there will be an almost exponential number of variables that will have to be considered by the committee. Something that is likely to be different about this year compared to years past is that the early games will be considered differently. Let’s take a look at some of the playoff changes first and how it will impact the whole season, and then we’ll look at how the Week 1 games affected the playoff picture.

Autobids and Byes for Conference Champions

This year’s playoff will be the first to include automatic bids to the playoffs for conference champions, and the first round will include 4 byes for the 4 highest rated conference champions. The five highest ranked conference champions will be selected, regardless of conference, so technically there isn’t any specific guarantee for individual conferences to get a bid, but it’s very difficult to imagine a scenario where the four champions of the Power 4 (P4)--SEC, Big Ten, ACC, Big 12–won’t get 4 of those 5 bids. That still leaves one autobid available for a Group of 5 team from the remaining, less prestigious conferences, Whichever 5 conference champions are the highest ranked are supposed to get in, and technically one of the Group of 5 champions could be higher ranked than one or more of the P4 champions, which would mean that they could qualify for a first-round bye as well. If we apply the current rules retroactively, this basically already happened in 2021 when Cincinnati made the 4-team playoff coming out of the American Athletic Conference. Similarly, Central Florida would have also qualified for one of the first-round byes in 2017 if it had existed then. The problem for fans of the AAC is that both of those teams are now in the Big 12; also, last year’s champs–the SMU Mustangs–have left to join the ACC. With the recent expansion and shifting of conferences, almost all of the best Group of Five teams have been “promoted” to one of the P4 conferences, though the collapse of the Pac 12 has inadvertently caused Oregon State and Washington State to leave the ranks of the P4.

For Nebraska, getting to the Big Ten championship game would quite likely be enough to get an at-large bid for the playoffs is that would by default indicate that we had one of the two best records of all 18 teams in the Big Ten conference. Yes, winning the championship is much more of a sure thing, but simply being one of the top 2 teams in one of the top 2 conferences is pretty darn close to a lock for getting into the playoffs.

Of the 5 autobids to the highest rated conference champions, the 4 highest rated will receive a first-round bye in the playoffs. If upsets occur in conference championship games, it can lead to some potential distortions to the playoff rankings. The 4 top-rated conference champs must be ranked #1 through #4 for the playoffs, even if they have multiple losses and (hypothetically) Notre Dame is undefeated. Since Notre Dame isn’t in a conference, they can’t be ranked #1 through 4, and they can’t get a first-round bye.

At first glance it would appear that the new format would have prevented last year’s controversies as Florida State would have received one of the autobids and a first-round bye, and Georgia would have been included as an impressive 1-loss at-large team, despite losing the SEC championship. However, the situation would have still been awkward if then, as now, Texas and Oklahoma were no longer part of the Big 12, and Washington was in the Big Ten. In that scenario, the Big 12 championship game would have been between 9-3 Oklahoma State and 8-4 West Virginia. Whoever won that hypothetical championship game would have received the 4th bye and would have been ranked higher than 1-loss Georgia.

Losses Aren’t Nearly so Disqualifying

An obvious change will be that teams will be able to lose multiple games yet still make it into the playoffs. Besides the occasional conference champ with a multi-loss record–which is an inevitability–we are all but guaranteed to have several other 2-loss teams that qualify for the new expanded format, and it is possible that even a 3-loss team (or two) could make it as an at-large bid. It is implausible that there won’t be at least a couple of 2-loss teams that are ranked high enough to receive bids. Even then, and sometimes there aren’t even enough 2-loss teams of those to fill out a full 12-team roster, and that’s even prior to consideration for conference championship upsets. Look at the SEC this year for some potential chaos….

Georgia has to travel to highly ranked playoff contenders, including Texas, Alabama, and Ole Miss, and that’s in addition to rivalry games with Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Auburn. If Georgia 1) lost to Alabama, 2) beat Ole Miss and Texas, but 3) got upset by Florida (or similar), they could easily win the tie-breaker to (in this example) play Alabama again in the SEC championship game. If they were to lose, again, would it make sense to punish Georgia for playing “Bama twice while taking Ole Miss or Texas (or both) who lost at home to the Bulldogs?

Something similar could happen in the B1G with Ohio State, who is the only team that plays all of the other highest ranked teams: Oregon, Michigan, and Penn State. This means that losing a game won’t necessarily disqualify anyone from any conference because 1) they can still get an autobid by winning their conference championship game, and 2) there will almost certainly not be enough 1-loss teams to fill out the field. This won’t be the case for most of the G5 schools, however. Almost none of them will have a loss to spare unless they upset some P4 teams to grab attention and compensate for a loss elsewhere. For those teams that are highly ranked to start the season and play in a P4 conference–especially the SEC or the Big Ten–finishing the regular season with 2 losses will likely be good enough to get an at-large bid, but not for G5 teams or for the P4 teams that start out unranked.

Since Nebraska started the year unranked, we will almost certainly not be in consideration for being one of the 3-loss teams who gets invited anyway,... but we could play a role in that happening. As said above, Ohio State plays a lot of heavy hitters in the B1G, and Nebraska plays Ohio State. Even better, we play them after they play Oregon and before they play Penn State, so it’s almost an ideal time for Ohio State to have a letdown. However, it’s also a home game for them, and it comes with a bye the week before the game, so … it’s not ideal. IF–yes, that’s a big “if”--Nebraska managed to pull the upset, we would be in position to inadvertently help Ohio State be in position to be one of those highly ranked teams with 3 losses that would still make the playoffs.

Cross-Conference Games Will Matter More than Ever

Even with the expansion of the SEC and the Big Ten, there can still be years where other conferences field enough high-quality teams that they can send 2 or possibly even more teams to the playoffs, and that means less teams from the B1G and the SEC with at-large bids. I’ll explain hypothetical scenarios in a later article, but suffice it to say that it’s possible. How do you know if these teams are better than the choices from other conferences? This is where cross-conference games will really matter. If Clemson beats Georgia and South Carolina in the same year, and those teams do well in the SEC, doesn’t that make the ACC look stronger? If teams struggle to win games in their own conference, but blow the doors off of other blue-bloods in cross-conference games, it should affect how the committee looks at the strength of each conference, and that will affect how many teams from each would likely get invited.

For Nebraska fans, this means that we truly should be rooting for every one of our opponents to win as much and by as much as possible in every other game on their schedule. So, if you were rooting for North Dakota State to upset Colorado, be grateful that it didn’t happen. If you were glad to see Minnesota miss the field goal that cost them their first game against North Carolina, you should probably enjoy it a little less. USC beating LSU can only help Nebraska’s strength of schedule, and it’s already being touted as a “Big Ten team defeats SEC team” cross-conference victory, which is ideal.

While the Transitive Property–if A>B, and B>C, then A>C–often doesn’t hold in football when teams manage to each end up with a loss, having a common opponent will likely still figure into the playoff committee’s calculations as they try to decide between 2 teams that never played each other, but did have an opponent in common. Notre Dame will (or at least should) root unabashedly for Texas A&M to win as much as possible in the SEC this year since the Irish just beat them in their own home. Look at who got into the ‘23 playoffs: does anybody doubt that it would have been difficult for the committee to take Alabama last year–who just won the SEC by beating previously undefeated Georgia–if the playoff committee had not taken Texas, who had walloped Alabama at home earlier in the season? Not only will common opponents have to be considered when comparing playoff contenders, the entire conferences’ records against one another will almost certainly weigh more heavily than before. I will try to highlight the Nebraska opponents who will likely be common opponents for other playoff contenders. It’s clarifying to know who to root for in the context of how it helps the Huskers.

The Rich WillStill Get Richer, and That Includes Conferences

The SEC and the Big Ten are almost certainly going to get at least 6 teams into the playoffs between them most seasons, and it will be more than that under the right circumstances. Add in the 3 remaining other conference champions, plus (most years) Notre Dame, and there are only 2 at-large bids left for everyone else … and even those can go to another Big Ten or SEC school. There can be rare exceptions where–as described above–an unusually loaded ACC or Big 12 could send multiple teams, but it cannot consistently come at the expense of the B1G and SEC … or else. If it does happen once, it’s not a big deal, and it spices things up a little bit. If it happens enough to be considered a realistic possibility, the two most powerful conferences will change the rules so that they will get what they want, which is more money and more power. With that in mind, here’s the first likely change to come…. Look for a 14-team playoff, probably coming by 2026 or sooner.. “Why not 16 teams?” you ask…. Because the B1G and the SEC will still want that first-round bye for their conference champions. We will likely be in a 14-team playoff by 2026 because it will insure that 7-or-more B1G and SEC teams get in every year, but if it expands beyond that, it would likely help other teams and conferences outside of the B1G and the SEC, and that’s bad for business. Expansion must come with benefits for the 2 behemoths, and it must not come at the expense of the SEC or the B1G. That means that they still get all of the proceeds from their own conference championships, which are already a cash cow. When (not “if”) the ACC disintegrates, the playoffs will likely be reshuffled again,... but it won’t result in more inclusion of other teams at the expense of the SEC and the B1G as a percentage.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world in college football expansion and governance right now, and Nebraska is extremely fortunate that we joined the Big Ten when we did. Imagine what it’s like being a fan of Kansas State or Iowa State looking to the future of college football, knowing that you don’t have enough financial value to make you lucrative to the new Leviathan that is being created. I enjoyed the 90s as much as any Nebraska fan could have,... but I’m grateful that we ended up where we now stand. Nebraska needs to reacquire AAU certification and start winning a lot of football games so that we don’t start looking like a financial drain to those programs making even more money.

If you’re wondering what will happen to all of the other teams outside of the SEC and the B1G, instead of killing the G5 conferences outright, the B1G and the SEC will more likely just keep getting richer and richer until the field is so slanted that all but a few of the G5 schools will decide to go and do something different. While it’s easy to be sympathetic towards teams like Oregon State and Washington State when their conference mates left them behind, how many of us remember that Idaho used to be at the FBS level before choosing to go down to FCS? Is that comparing apples to oranges? No, not really. A hundred years ago, Idaho was part of an earlier iteration of the Pac 12. They didn’t have the resources to compete, so they left. They have bounced back and forth between the divisions that we now call FBS and FCS, but nobody outside of Idaho sheds many tears for them because they chose to go their own route…. And so it almost certainly shall be with a a majority of the G5 teams eventually, and that probably will also eventually include some ACC and Big 12 teams, too.

As long as we’re on this tangent of programs choosing to no longer play at the highest level, it’s not crazy to think that eventually schools like Northwestern, Stanford, Cal, and/or Vanderbilt might decide to go the way of the Ivies and stop competing at the highest level of football. If you go back to the mid-1900s, Penn was a national football power. Before that, in the 1920s and 30s the University of Chicago was a national power. The Maroons were a charter member of the original Big Ten conference, and they won 2 national championships under Amos Alonzo Staff. Picture the Heisman Trophy…. That guy holding the ball and giving you a stiff-arm is a statue of Jay Berwanger, the first recipient of the award that we now call the Heisman Trophy. They called it the “Jay Berwanger Award” for the first several years before eventually renaming it after John Heisman because, hey, when you have a coach that wins a game 222-0, you probably have to name an award after him. Anyway, guess where Berwanger went to college? If you said “the University of Chicago,” … you are smart. The irony is that the University of Chicago soon afterward decided to stop playing football at the highest level because it had become too expensive and too distracting from their academic mission as a university. Does anybody doubt that that could happen again?

So What Did Weeks 0 and 1 Reveal About Nebraska’s Chances at the Playoffs

Don’t plan on more than 1 team from the ACC making the playoffs. Florida State and/or Clemson might still come back to win out the rest of their regular-season games, but if one does, that team will likely also win the conference championship and get the autobid. Miami is the only ACC team that made an impressive statement, but that won’t last when/if Florida continues to struggle against the rest of its schedule, and/or if Miami stumbles a time or two along the way. Louisville and NC State might still prove to be playoff contenders, but I think that it will be difficult for the ACC to convince the committee members that their 2nd best team is more deserving than the 4th best teams in both the B1G and the SEC.

The SEC had a chance to put a stranglehold on the playoffs, but they couldn’t get it done. While Georgia looks like the belle of the ball with their dismantling of Clemson, and most of the other ranked SEC teams looked the part of playoff contenders, the conference did miss out on several opportunities to remove potential rivals for playoff spots. The most obvious were chances for LSU to beat USC and Texas A&M to beat Notre Dame, but I also thought that Florida at home had a shot at beating Miami. If the SEC had won ALL of those games, Paul Finebaum would have had to call his doctor because he would have been in a priapistic state of euphoria until at least Wednesday at the earliest. Instead, any major wins in conference by LSU, A&M, and/or Florida will now prop up the teams that just beat them, and that indirectly props up the conferences that those teams represent. (Notre Dame, of course, is its own entity, but the point holds.) Speaking of whom …

Notre Dame has a clear path to the playoffs. As of right now, only Florida State and USC remain as ranked teams on the Irish schedule, and Notre Dame could potentially lose both and still get into the playoffs as long as they’re not embarrassed, and as long as Florida State and USC at least resemble playoff teams in record and ranking at the time that they play the Irish. I predict that USC will lack the depth to be as formidable at the end of the season as they were at the beginning, so the Seminoles game on November 9 in South Bend looms large for the Belligerent Celts’ playoff plans. Louisville in Week 5 and Georgia Tech in Week 7 might also prove to be tougher than expected preseason. Louisville will likely be ranked when they play, but Notre Dame will still be favored at home. The primetime Saturday night win over A&M at Kyle Field will likely look even more impressive by season’s end as A&M is loaded with talent, and their new coaching staff will likely get more out of them as the season progresses.

Will LSU be punished by the playoff committee for scheduling USC? Say what you will about LSU and/or Brian Kelly, they have started the past 3 seasons with tough non-conference games, and they shouldn’t be unduly punished for it. If LSU goes on to have a respectable season and finishes 9-3, it’s doubtful that they will make the playoffs, and–if they don’t make the playoffs in that scenario–the blame will be laid squarely on losing to USC in Week 1 in what is effectively a preseason challenge of their own choosing. Saban won a lot of championships at Alabama while playing a cupcake in November just before the Iron Bowl. Will LSU wish that they had scheduled Mercer in November instead of USC in August when this season is over? Contrary to what some others have said, I think that the expanded playoff will take away any motivation for the blue-blood programs to ever schedule tough non-conference games again. While there are obvious advantages to a G5 team having a chance to make a name for itself by knocking off a blue-blood, why will the blue-bloods want to take that risk in the future? The optimists will look at it as a potential way to improve their stock, but I look at it as yet another opportunity to gather what will soon be considered “the dreaded 3rd loss.” The exact same scenario can play out for A&M, Clemson, and Florida as they also lost non-conference games against quality opponents, but I suspect that LSU and A&M are the ones most likely to be hurt this year by scheduling difficult non-conference games early when they didn’t have to. LSU has UCLA coming to visit in September followed by #6 Ole Miss, #5 Alabama, and #14 Oklahoma, plus road trips to Texas A&M, South Carolina, Florida, and Arkansas. Put simply, the USC game was almost a must-win game already for LSU as that murderers’ row of waiting opponents is almost certainly going to take a couple more bites out of the Tigers’ win-loss record.

Is USC a serious playoff contender? Speaking of tough schedules, the men of Troy say, “Hold my cape and watch this.” USC will be racking up frequent flier miles like nobody else besides Hawaii and UCLA (who went to Hawaii!!!). Trojans’ travel plans look like a continental yo-you: home this week against Utah State, then at #9 Michigan; home against Wisconsin then at Minnesota; home against #8 Penn State then at Maryland; home against Rutgers then at Washington. November will involve less luggage as they wrap up at home against Nebraska then almost-home at UCLA and finally home again for #7 Notre Dame. Counting LSU, there were/are 4 highly ranked teams on their schedule, but it’s likely that Wisconsin, Nebraska, Maryland, and/or Rutgers will also be ranked by the time that they play. While USC benefited by avoiding Ohio State and Oregon, it’s a fair question to ask if USC has the depth in the trenches to make it through that schedule with only 2 losses. If they do, they almost certainly deserve to be in the playoffs. More likely, a lot of those teams are going to be measured against LSU and Notre Dame with USC as a common opponent.

Penn State’s impressive win at West Virginia on Saturday could prove to be much more important than what it seems now. The Big 12 teams are mostly at a disadvantage as few can afford to lose a non-conference game and still be selected for the playoffs without winning their conference championship game. West Virginia is one of about 6 to 10 teams in the Big 12 that have a plausible shot at winning the conference, though it’s unlikely that any of them will be undefeated in conference play. What that means is that because West Virginia lost at home to Penn State, they have to win the Big 12 in order to get into the playoffs since they are currently unranked, and thus have a steeper hill to climb than almost any other contenders who will be viewed as a bubble team in early December for the playoffs. On the other hand, there isn’t anybody in the Big 12 that West Virginia is unable to beat, so every victory by them knocks out another contender for the playoffs. Penn State, meanwhile, has one of the better schedules within the Big Ten as they avoid Oregon, Michigan, and Iowa. Their only opponents ranked in the preseason are #2 Ohio State (at home) and a trip to #23 USC, but again, that USC team is likely to be battered, bruised, and jetlagged by the time they play in mid-October. Penn State has already put itself in great position for the playoffs by winning this week 1 road game, especially if West Virginia goes on to have a good year in the Big 12. Meanwhile, the Big 12 needs as many positive data points as possible with non-conference wins against the Big Ten, SEC, and ACC in order to have a better argument for more than one of their teams making the playoffs.

The ACC really needed Clemson to make it a closer game with #1 Georgia, but #19 Miami alleviated some of the pain by crushing Florida.. If both Miami and Clemson had lost, the top 3 ACC teams in preseason rankings would already have a loss after Florida State’s lost to Georgia Tech last weekend. Miami was listed as a slight favorite at Florida, but Florida has a lot of talent on its roster, and it is usually tough to beat them at home. If Miami can continue to impress, they can be in position to be that second ACC team in the playoffs, if they don’t win the conference outright. It is very likely that there will be too many really good teams in the SEC and B1G to justify taking a second ACC team that has more than one loss. To do so would likely mean taking a 2-loss Clemson or Florida State team over a 2-loss Alabama or Michigan or similar, any of whom will have more impressive wins on their resumes.

Add all of those items up, and it totals out more to the Big Ten and Nebraska’s favor than against. We should want USC to beat Notre Dame, but we might not want Louisville or Florida State to beat them. If Purdue could pull of the upset, that would be awesome for us. We also want Michigan to beat Texas. Yes, it will help Michigan, but it’s another data point that will favor the Big Ten versus the SEC, and that might make the difference down the stretch.

Going forward, should Nebraska avoid scheduling P4 teams in its non-conference schedule? Why introduce another opportunity to be derailed. It especially seems unnecessary since the SEC isn’t even playing 9 conference games at the moment.

This article will hopefully be the first of many for as long as Nebraska still has some hope of making the playoffs. Here’s hoping that I’m still making updates into December. Tomorrow look for my next article on the playoffs as we look ahead to Week 2 and which games weigh the heaviest and why. There will be a special article next week mainly focused on all of the non-P4 teams, and how their games could affect Nebraska’s hopes for a playoff berth. If you have any thoughts or questions to add to the discussion, please, contact me and let me know, and I’ll do my best to incorporate anything good that is shared or asked.

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