Sigh...I was hoping I wouldn't have to do one of these this year. After spending every first Sunday in December from 2014 through 2018 on pins and needles waiting to hear the Buckeyes' Playoff fate, all we had to worry about in the first two years of the Day era was our seeding (no, Texas A&M was never, ever, ever getting in ahead of us). Unfortunately, like last year, something happened along the way. Unlike last year, the hitch may not be fatal this time. All we need to say about it for now is the Buckeyes suffered a convincing loss to a very good team.
Lost in the doomsday chatter among Buckeye Nation and the pointing and laughing from the rogues' gallery is the inconvenient truth that the Playoff still needs four teams to round out its field. It doesn't matter how good these teams are in an absolute sense: if there aren't four teams better than you out there, you're in. And though the list of contenders is somewhat thinner than in years past, we can safely assume that the four participants will be drawn from among the remaining 2-loss or fewer teams:
Undefeateds
- Georgia
- Michigan
- TCU
One-loss teams
- USC
- Ohio State
Two-loss teams
- Alabama
- Tennessee
- Penn State
- Clemson
- Washington
The two-loss teams are mostly included here just for completeness's sake; even with maximum chaos this weekend we will have at least four teams with fewer than two losses. The Committee has never put a two-loss team in the Playoff so it would seem that we would need to see a two-loss team with an exceptional resume and a one-loss team with a flimsy one in order for a new precedent to be set. Are there any such two-loss teams? Certainly not Clemson or Washington: they sit at #13 and #18 in Bill Connelly's SP+ rankings and at #10 and #16 in the Massey College Football Ranking Composite, respectively. SP+ is intended to be a predictive measure of team quality while the Massey Composite aggregates the human polls, computer rankings, and other well known indices in a "wisdom of crowds" approach. Clemson's only quality win is over Florida State (#23/#15), and their two losses are to (a) the same Notre Dame (#35/#20) that USC and Ohio State comfortably dispatched and (b) South Carolina (#26/#23). Their ACC championship foe, North Carolina (#46/#29) isn't going to move the needle either; every other Playoff contender on this list has multiple wins better than this. Somehow, Washington didn't finish in the top two of the Pac-12, so they won't have a chance to boost their resume beyond their existing wins over Oregon (#12/#14) and Oregon State (#22/#17) and the worst loss among the Playoff contenders, to Arizona State (#82/#95!). You can go ahead and throw out Penn State (#8/#7) as well; they do have two forgivable losses to Michigan (#2/#2) and Ohio State (#3/#4) but their best win by far is over Minnesota (#16/#36).
Alabama (#4/#5) and Tennessee (#5/#6) are a little closer to the conversation. Tennessee's loss to Georgia (#1/#1) is fine, although its loss to the aforementioned South Carolina will hold them back, while Alabama lost to LSU (#15/#12) and...Tennessee. The Committee must have really hated Tennessee's loss to South Carolina, because despite the Vols having wins over Alabama and the LSU team that handed Bama their other loss, Alabama started this week in the 7 spot while Tennessee was all the way down at 10. Of course, that could have a great deal to do with Tennessee losing erstwhile Heisman candidate Hendon Hooker; nobody wants to see Joe Milton in the Playoff. Regardless, we can glean a pretty big clue from the fact that Alabama was still a spot behind one-loss USC (#11/#8) last week, and that was before USC picked up another decent win over Notre Dame. Could Ohio State, with a sizable advantage according to the advanced stats (#3 in SP+) and overall value from the rankings landscape (#4 in Massey) compared to USC last week (#14/#10 at that point), fall past the Tide after this weekend's loss? I don't see it. Some will raise the "Alabama is two plays away from being undefeated!" argument, since the Tide lost to Tennessee on a last-second field goal and to LSU on a 2-point conversion. But the Tide are also three plays away from three additional losses to Texas, Texas A&M, and Ole Miss, whereas the Buckeyes blew everyone away until, well, you know.
That leaves our group of five one-loss or fewer teams. USC is an easy mark to fall below Ohio State with a second loss this weekend to Utah (#10/#13), as that would put the Trojans at two losses with a worse resume than Alabama. However, I don't see the Buckeyes passing either Georgia or Michigan should either team lose this weekend. Michigan's resume top-to-bottom would actually be pretty similar to Ohio State's, swapping out one pretty bad loss (Purdue) for a superior quality win (guess who), but the head-to-head implications of The Game, as well as how that game played out, would be too much to ignore. As for Georgia, losing to LSU is worse than losing to Michigan, but their wins over Tennessee (#5/#6), Oregon (#12/#14), Mississippi State (#20/#18), South Carolina (#26/#23), and Kentucky (#25/#28) would crowd out Ohio State's wins over Penn State (#7/#8) and Notre Dame (#35/#20) (what's OSU's third best win? Maryland (#32/#44)? Iowa (#27/#45)?).
TCU is a more interesting case. From a resume standpoint, they're about dead even with Ohio State today, as evidenced by their superior Massey ranking but lagging SP+ rating. The Horned Frogs have deceptively good wins over Kansas State (#9/#9) and Texas (#7/#11), and the Kansas State win would only appreciate, oddly enough, if TCU were to lose this weekend. The Big 12 doesn't really have any clunker teams this year, as the worst team is either 5-7 West Virginia (#63/#63) or 4-8 Iowa State (#53/#65), about on par with Michigan State (#67/#66) who is far from the worst team in the Big Ten. TCU's out of conference schedule is atrocious (Colorado (#123/#117), Tarleton (FCS), and SMU (#56/#52)) but the thirteenth game against a quality Kansas State opponent would more than balance this out. I could see the Committee hesitating to punish TCU for playing that thirteenth game. But here's the thing. Everything I just said about the schedule and the relative strength of the Big 12 and the Big Ten was priced into last week's Playoff rankings. And the Committee still had Ohio State ranked #2 and TCU ranked #4. I find it hard to believe that Ohio State could subsequently go out and lose to Michigan, and TCU lose to Kansas State, and the Committee to suddenly change their mind and go with TCU as the better team, extra win over Iowa State be damned. Neither team would have a conference championship tiebreaker and Ohio State would undoubtedly have the edge in the advanced stats and computer rankings once again (the Buckeyes were #2/#2 in last week's rankings, as compared to #7/#4 for TCU). And there's precedent for precisely this situation. In 2017, undefeated #4 Wisconsin lost to two-loss #8 Ohio State, and both were subsequently left out of the Playoff in favor of one-loss #5 Alabama, who had been idle on championship weekend. TCU's had their share of close shaves this season, while Ohio State's 11 wins have each come by double digits. I don't think the Horned Frogs are safe with a loss, except perhaps by the very slimmest of margins, and only if the Committee really decides to knock the Buckeyes down a peg for losing to Michigan by multiple scores. A 22 point loss is ugly on paper, although The Game was reasonably close before the Buckeye defense started going for broke and Donovan Edwards happily complied. If TCU loses by 20+, it won't be a tough decision.
On a side note, the most objectively hilarious outcome would be for USC to win but TCU to lose. The Horned Frogs would then likely miss out on the Playoff in favor of Ohio State again, but for the exact opposite reason as in 2014. After the Committee ranked both Baylor and TCU behind the Buckeyes in 2014, in part because neither Big 12 co-champion had a conference championship game victory to compete with OSU's 59-0 shellacking of Wisconsin, the Big 12 decided to add a pointless conference championship game to wrap up their round robin season. This worked in the conference's favor in 2018, when Oklahoma got a chance to avenge their loss to Texas and barely hold off Ohio State (and Georgia) for the #4 spot. But this season, it could just as easily cost TCU a spot they'd already have in the bag in a simple round-robin 12 game season. Remember 1998 Kansas Staaaaate...
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