Breaking down SEC's path to five or more College Football Playoff bids, multiple 9-3 selections
By Google News Sports ·
How many three-loss teams can the SEC push into the College Football Playoff this season?
That question may decide whether the league touts a record-setting five or more bids on Selection Sunday next month or argues over the teams the selection committee left at home.
Sorting through the CFP carnage coming out of Week 10 is headache-inducing, all thanks to a selection committee that left us with several questions exiting their first rankings -- why Alabama was ranked eight spots higher than Tennessee despite the Vols winning that matchup, for starters.
The SEC's best shot at five or more bids begins with its frontrunners taking care of business; then comes the fun part. Which 9-3 team has the best wins, whose worst loss is hardest to explain and how many of those résumés can hold up against teams with better records from other Power Four conferences?
Chaos elsewhere would certainly help, too. There's a path to multiple three-loss selections, but who beats whom over the next three weekends will decide everything. For clarity, we've officially projected five SEC teams to appear in the final bracket in this week's playoff and bowls update, including a first-round game between two league teams (Tennessee and Texas).
Ten wins is the magic number to virtually guarantee an at-large berth from the SEC. Right now, there are only five teams who could get there -- Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Texas and Tennessee. Others in the mix -- LSU, Ole Miss and South Carolina -- each have three losses and need help.
With that in mind, we've come up with a couple of combinations that would delight Greg Sankey and the league office in an effort to cram as many SEC teams into the final 12-team bracket as possible.
The selection committee has already shown us how much they respect this league with their new strength of conference metric this season, and that's only going to be enhanced over the final three weeks of the regular season.
A 9-3 finish in the SEC will get you in the room but doesn't necessarily mean an at-large invite. Among all the teams who could finish with nine wins -- and we're not including one-loss Georgia here -- Texas has the best resume entering Week 11 with four nationally ranked wins, followed by Alabama (ranked wins over Kentucky, LSU) and Tennessee (ranked wins over Alabama, Kentucky).
LSU doesn't have a ranked victory yet, and South Carolina has one (Tennessee).
And with all potential nine-win finishers, they're going to be clumped in the same group with runner-ups from the Big 12 and ACC -- along with high-end teams in the Big Ten -- for the final bites at the apple. All of those teams could have better records, but the resumes likely won't be comparable.
Georgia and Alabama are on a crash course to meet in Atlanta next month for what could be the league's final conference championship game, but if one of those teams stubs its toe down the stretch, there will be some shuffling. We've drawn out these scenarios in the event both reach the finale. These are not all the wide range of possible combinations, but are the most plausible:
Likeliest scenario: 11-1 finish, SEC Championship Game appearance, CFP berth
Chaos possibility: Loss at South Carolina, Nov. 21
Kirby Smart's team is in the best shape to get a top-four seed and an opening-round bye coming out of consecutive blowout wins over Florida and Ole Miss. Georgia corrected its mistakes after falling at home to Auburn during its open date and appears to be playing its…
Originally published by Google News Sports
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