On Thursday we covered the most likely scenario to unfold when the final College Football Playoff bracket is announced on Sunday at Noon ET. Indiana will probably be playing on the road.
But with a weekend full of conference championship games involving current or potential CFP teams, are there scenarios that could result in Indiana hosting a first round game? Or, gulp, falling out of the playoff?
Currently Indiana is ranked No. 9 and seeded No. 10 in the 12-team CFP bracket. Seeds 5-8 host, and the teams ranked 11 and 12 are at risk of getting bumped out of the bracket because the CFP rules favor conference champions.
As a refresher, the top four seeds on Sunday will go to the highest-ranked conference champions, with a fifth conference champion making the bracket too. The fifth conference champion will be seeded where it was ranked or at No. 12 if it is outside the top 12 rankings.
HERE’S WHAT WON’T HAPPEN ON SUNDAY
Indiana is stuck behind several teams in the CFP rankings. According to CFP Selection Committee Chair Warde Manuel, IU cannot pass any team in the rankings that isn’t playing this weekend. And any team not playing cannot pass the Hoosiers either. Here’s what Manuel said about that on Tuesday:
“If you take, for example, Tennessee is ahead of SMU, Indiana is behind SMU; Tennessee will not drop below Indiana at any point. Neither team is playing,” Manuel said.
“But SMU could move up, depending on how we evaluate the game. They could stay where they are or they could move down depending on the outcome of the game. But Tennessee and Indiana in this example would never flip. Indiana would never move ahead of Tennessee and Tennessee would never drop below Indiana because we’ve already evaluated them. There’s not another datapoint because they’re not playing in the championship games. So we don’t have anything else to add to the evaluation of those teams, so we can’t move them above or below each other.”
So Indiana cannot pass Tennessee (7), Ohio State (6) or Notre Dame (4), the three teams above them in the rankings that are not playing this weekend. And the Hoosiers cannot be passed by teams like Alabama (11), Miami (12), Ole Miss (13) and South Carolina (14), all teams ranked lower than IU and also idle this weekend.
WHO IS PLAYING THIS WEEKEND?
Here are the conference championship games being played this weekend with CFP implications:
(CFP ranking)
- (20) UNLV at (10) Boise State, Friday, 8 p.m. ET (FOX)
- (16) Iowa State vs. (15) Arizona State, Saturday, Noon ET (ABC)
- (5) Georgia vs. (2) Texas, Saturday, 4 p.m. ET (ABC)
- (3) Penn State vs. (1) Oregon, Saturday, 8 p.m. ET (CBS)
- (17) Clemson vs. (8) SMU, Saturday, 8 p.m. ET (ABC)
SO WHO CAN THE HOOSIERS PASS?
Based on the criteria set out by Manuel, there are just five teams left in the rankings Indiana could theoretically pass:
(1) Oregon: If the Ducks win they’ll remain No. 1, if they lose to Penn State, can they fall all the way below Indiana? That’s not happening.
(2) Texas: If the Longhorns win they will still be in the top four, if they lose to Georgia for a second time this season, will they fall all the way below Indiana? With their two losses coming to top-10 team and a better strength of schedule than IU, don’t count on it.
(3) Penn State: If the Nittany Lions lose to No. 1 Oregon, giving them two losses to just one for IU, could they fall below the Hoosiers? The Committee has PSU third, meaning they really like them. Could a loss to No. 1 really do that much damage? Maybe a blowout loss? Maybe the latter, but even that seems very unlikely. The committee currently has no problem placing a two-loss Georgia team ahead of IU, ostensibly because of strength of schedule. PSU has that advantage over IU as well, and they won’t have any bad losses.
(5) Georgia: This could be interesting. If the Bulldogs suffer a third loss on the season, and look bad against Texas, you could see a case for dropping them below one-loss Indiana irrespective of Georgia’s more difficult schedule. So go ahead, root for a Texas blowout win. Just don’t get your hopes up too much.
(8) SMU: The Mustangs are clearly at risk of dropping below Indiana with a bad loss to Clemson on Saturday. Remember that SMU is currently the No. 3 seed in the bracket. So if they lose, another conference champion is going to take that spot. It could be Boise State, Clemson, Arizona State or Iowa State based on the rankings. But just because SMU falls, that doesn’t necessarily mean it helps IU in the bracket. It will probably just mean that two teams will jump IU when comparing the rankings and seeds.
So if Georgia loses bad and IU passes them to move up to No. 8 in the rankings, it seems like the only way the Hoosiers can be seeded No. 8 or better and host is if no conference champions pass them in the seedings (like Boise State, Clemson, Iowa State or Arizona State). And it’s difficult to see a scenario where that is the case. And if both Georgia and SMU lose, and IU passes them both to No. 7, then two conference champs are passing the Hoosiers in the bracket.
So there’s likely no path to host here.
CAN INDIANA DROP OUT?
As unlikely as it may be for IU to host at this point, it’s even less likely that they’ll get bumped completely out of the bracket.
No. 10 Boise State could move ahead of IU in the rankings, but they’re already ahead of the Hoosiers in the bracket as a conference winner. So that wouldn’t mean anything.
And as mentioned, none of the No. 11 through 14 teams are playing this weekend, so none of them can pass Indiana according to Manuel.
And it seems just about impossible for any team ranked No. 15 or worse to jump all the way above the No. 9 team at this point.
So one way or another, the Hoosiers are in. And they are almost certainly opening on the road.
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