We get you, college football fans. It’s easy to get emotional after a weekend of highs and lows. Here at Overreaction HQ we try to take a bird’s-eye view of the playoff landscape to determine who has a realistic path to cracking the final top 12. But if it’s your team that just took a disheartening loss, you’re pretty despondent right now – ‘Aspirations in the clouds but your hopes go down the drain,’ as Howard Jones put it. (Google it, kids, it’s great.)
In this edition of the top five overreactions of the week, we’ll assess the damage at a few locales, including campus sites as well as a couple of league offices.
Penn State
The crisis for Nittany Lions’ faithful is essentially twofold. Most have come to terms with the reality that the Big Ten title is off the table, as barring some incredibly strange happenings the championship game will be Oregon against the Ohio State-Indiana winner. Penn State is still very much in the at-large discussion as long as it wins its remaining games to finish 11-1.
But the looming question then becomes, will the Lions actually do any damage once they get there? As has been well documented, the team’s recent seasons have unfolded predictably, winning the games it’s supposed to win but unable to reach the summit. Would a win in the round of 12 against a mid-tier finisher from another power conference even be viewed as a success if it were followed by a quarterfinal loss to one of the sport’s elite?
Internally, of course, the team members can’t afford to ponder such questions, as there’s still work to be done with a couple of squads with winning records left on the schedule. The fans will stay on board the rest of the way, but this week’s disappointment might take some time to dissipate.
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Clemson
One could almost feel the panic meter rising around Death Valley as Saturday night’s game against Louisville methodically slipped away from the Tigers. With that result came the realization that Clemson’s six-game winning streak had largely been built on empty calories.
The Tigers will now need help just to reach the ACC title game in the form of a loss by either Miami or SMU. Assuming they don’t get it, they might still be on the periphery of the at-large discussion if they can get to 10-2, which would include a win at Pittsburgh and a home triumph against South Carolina in the regular-season finale. A loss in either – or this week at Virginia Tech – would remove any doubt, and that would not sit well for a fan base accustomed to playing for championships.
Texas A&M
The situation for the two-loss Aggies is a bit different, in the sense that their most realistic playoff scenario still involves winning the SEC title or at least reaching the championship game. A win against Texas at the end of the month would do the trick, as Georgia and Tennessee must still play each other and the Aggies own a head-to-head tiebreaker against LSU.
But a second conference loss, which would be the Aggies’ third overall, would leave their playoff fate in the hands of the committee. Their resume might hold up against other teams in the three-loss pool, but they’d do well not to put themselves in that position. They have a week off and then a game against New Mexico State to get things sorted out before a trip to Auburn and a home date with their biggest rival.
The Big 12
There had to be a wee bit of anxiety around the league office as two of the conference’s top three candidates, Iowa State and Kansas State, went down to defeat within minutes of each other Saturday evening. It’s extremely unlikely the conference will be left out of the field altogether, but those results left open the possibility that the eventual Big 12 champion might not get a first-round bye.
Automatic berths, remember, are guaranteed for the five highest ranked conference champs, with the top four among those assured spots in the quarterfinals. Could the Big 12 winner not be among the top four? It’s not out of the question with Boise State ranked at No. 14 in the US LBM Coaches Poll.
There is, of course, one Big 12 squad still unscathed. Should Brigham Young make it to 13-0 claiming the league title in the process, they couldn’t be denied a top-four seed, especially with that early win against possible ACC champ SMU in the bank. But should the Cougars fall in the conference finale or drop any of their remaining games in November, whichever team ends up as league champ will have multiple losses. Iowa State and Kansas State will play each other at the end of the month, and either Colorado or Texas Tech will take another loss when they square off this week. We’ll know a bit more about how the committee views the so-called Group of Five conferences, specifically how Boise State and Army compare to the Big 12 contenders, when the initial rankings come out Tuesday night.
The American
Speaking of Army, the Black Knights did their part for their new league by taking care of academy rival Air Force despite the absence of starting quarterback Bryson Daily. But overall it was a rough weekend for the American Athletic, with Navy losing a long-delayed contest at Rice and Memphis falling to Texas-San Antonio. Mountain West leader Boise State, meanwhile, continued to look the part of the best team from outside the Power Four with a dominant outing against San Diego State on Friday night.
If the Broncos keep winning, there might not be anything the American can do to crack the playoff lineup. There is that opportunity for Army against Notre Dame in three weeks at Yankee Stadium, but the Black Knights will almost certainly need a healthy Daily for that one as well as for this week’s trip to North Texas to keep their hopes of crashing the party alive.