What we learned about the College Football Playoff: SEC upsets, Big 12 chaos, Indiana’s hopes

The weekend before Thanksgiving often feels like the calm before the storm in college football.

Saturday was different. The expanded College Football Playoff turned it into a tempest with postseason implications from the home of the Super Bowl champion Chiefs in Kansas City to the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx.

Ohio State improved to 2-1 in top-five matchups and showed everybody’s favorite upstart — at least everybody outside of SEC country — what life is like at the top of the food chain. The Big 12 race continued its descent into madness with the two teams that appeared to be in control of the race now heading into the final weekend of the regular season needing help to reach the conference title game.

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And in the SEC, three CFP contenders lost on the road to unranked teams.

What we learned about the Playoff in Week 13 is that expansion to 12 teams is delivering exactly what was promised: more meaningful games and more chances for mayhem.

SEC upsets

It has felt recently as if the entire SEC and its propaganda machine had risen against Indiana in an attempt to discredit the Hoosiers as Playoff contenders.

Then the conference went out and did just about everything it could to ensure the Hoosiers stayed very much in the race after they lost for the first time this season.

Auburn improved to 5-6 with its upset of Texas A&M on Saturday night. (John Reed / Imagn Images)

First, Ole Miss (8-3) got walked to the back of the line by Florida.

The Rebels have what might be the single most impressive victory of the season against Georgia, but coach Lane Kiffin’s portal all-stars have lost three games they were favored to win, twice as double-digit favorites.

How’s this for irony: The coach who many considered the most likely candidate to replace Billy Napier at Florida probably was just eliminated from Playoff contention by Napier’s Gators.

Life comes at you fast.

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If Florida’s 24-17 over No. 9 Ole Miss was surprising, Oklahoma’s 24-3 victory against Alabama (8-3) was downright shocking.

Party like it’s 2000‼️ pic.twitter.com/TtwjYkY6zd

— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) November 24, 2024

The Sooners ran for 257 yards and picked off Alabama’s Jalen Milroe three times as the seventh-ranked Crimson Tide were held without a touchdown for the first time since the 2011 Game of the Century against LSU, which the Tigers won 9-6 in overtime.

“The team is extremely disappointed, frustrated,” Tide coach Kalen DeBoer told reporters. “We worked, I thought, extremely hard all week, putting a plan together. Guys had good energy, excited to come here on the road. You know, we just gotta play better. We gotta be better in all ways.”

By the time Auburn knocked off No. 15 Texas A&M (8-3) 43-41 in quadruple overtime, the SEC title game was set but the number of SEC Playoff contenders likely shrunk.

No. 10 Georgia (9-2) is back in the conference championship and will face the winner of next Saturday’s first-ever SEC edition of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry.

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There is still no denying the SEC is top to bottom the strongest conference in the country. The SEC might still get as many as four teams in the 12-team field because there needs to be 12 teams.

The SEC can be a grind, and because of that, the selection committee has given its teams an extra mulligan and the benefit of the doubt in the rankings. There were four two-loss teams in the committee’s top 11 last week. All from the SEC.

Sure, playing on the road in the SEC is tough, but Miami didn’t have much of an issue at Florida in Week 1, and Auburn wasn’t too scary for Cal back in September. Tulane went to Oklahoma earlier this season and somehow scored three touchdowns.

The strength-of-schedule numbers that SEC commissioner Greg Sankey posted on social media last week don’t lie. The conference has earned the preferential treatment it gets.

Interesting to read analysis from others as they examine “strength of schedule” in college football…it does seem there is a trend to be identified… pic.twitter.com/pXSfxRMxvL

— Greg Sankey (@GregSankey) November 21, 2024

But at a certain point, it doesn’t seem like too much to ask these SEC teams to take care of business against teams that have been wallowing at the bottom of the standings if the conference wants to monopolize the at-large bids to the Playoff.

All odds according to Austin Mock’s projections model

Imperfect Hoosiers

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti was not having any of it.

“Is that a serious question? I’m not even going to answer that. The answer is so obvious,” Cignetti said.

The question was, essentially, is No. 5 Indiana Playoff worthy after it got manhandled 38-15 at No. 2 Ohio State.

Cignetti is going to Cignetti, and he has every right to defend his 10-1 team, which has gone from lovable underdog to CFP lightning rod for those whose arguments begin and end with “strength of schedule.”

Indiana’s schedule is a legitimate problem for the Hoosiers, and while they didn’t need to beat the Buckeyes at the Horseshoe to prove their worthiness, it would have been good to give the selection committee more than 151 yards of offense to chew on. Indiana did get plenty of help from the losses elsewhere, however, so much so that its Playoff chances actually rose from 79 percent to 87 percent in The Athletic’s projections by the end of the night.

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The Hoosiers’ first and, basically, last drives of the game resulted in touchdowns, with hardly a peep in between. They touched the ball one more time late for a few seconds after Ohio State punched in a touchdown with 35 seconds left to send a message.

“We said leave no doubt… We wanted to finish it the right way and make sure that everybody knows that this is The Ohio State Buckeyes.”@JennyTaft speaks with @OhioStateFB‘s Ryan Day after a dominant win over Indiana ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/dHDNqKBMPp

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 23, 2024

“We said leave no doubt,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day told Fox after the game. “We wanted to finish it the right way and make sure that everybody knows that this is the Ohio State Buckeyes.”

The fact is, 38-15 felt right. Ohio State led 14-7 at the half, but a couple of empty red-zone trips had kept Indiana within a score.

Ohio State still has to take care of business next week against Michigan and snap a three-game losing streak against the Wolverines to get back to the Big Ten Championship Game for a rematch against No. 1 Oregon.

“It’s been tough. It’s tough what I had to see (Day) go through,” Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer told reporters. “There’s no one I want this win more for than him and his family and the brothers I go to battle with every day. The stuff that we’ve had to go through the last three years is nonsense. We can’t wait to get out there and play this next week.”

No. 4 Penn State can still slip into the Big Ten title game with an Ohio State loss and victory against Maryland next week. The Nittany Lions managed to avoid the upset bug that swept through SEC country, gutting out a 26-25 victory in Minnesota with the help of a fake punt and two more fourth-down conversions to run out the clock on their final drive.

“At the end of the day, our team found a way,” coach James Franklin said.

New favorites

The best team in the Big 12 right now might be Kansas, which has won three straight against ranked conference opponents after hammering No. 16 Colorado 37-21 at Arrowhead Stadium.

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Alas, there is no path to the conference title game for the Jayhawks (5-6), who still need to win at Baylor next week to get bowl eligible.

3 STRAIGHT RANKED WINS 👏@KU_Football becomes the 1st team in FBS History with a losing record to win 3 straight games vs. ranked opponents 🔥👀 pic.twitter.com/8EFsr6zKgV

— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) November 24, 2024

Remember when No. 14 BYU and Colorado were on a collision course to meet in Arlington, Texas, for the Big 12 title? Now there is a four-way tie atop the league, with No. 21 Arizona State and No. 22 Iowa State joining BYU and Colorado.

The difference is the Sun Devils (9-2), who handed BYU its second straight loss, and the Cyclones (9-2), are now in win-and-in mode. The Cougars (9-2) and Buffaloes (8-3) will need some help.

Arizona State gets struggling rival Arizona in the Territorial Cup. Iowa State hosts Kansas State in Farmageddon.

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Last week, Boise State was ranked ahead of the highest-ranked Big 12 team, putting the Broncos in position to receive a first-round bye as Mountain West champions.

Ashton Jeanty and Boise State kept on rolling through the conference Saturday, though their trip to Wyoming was much tougher than expected. It will be interesting to see if the Broncos’ struggles in Laramie help the highest-ranked Big 12 team — whoever that might be on Tuesday night, probably Arizona State — push past Boise State in the rankings.

Irish rise?

After Indiana’s loss and Penn State’s close call, how high can Notre Dame climb in the rankings?

The sixth-ranked Fighting Irish (10-1) will head to the West Coast for their annual rivalry game against USC on a nine-game winning streak after burying a previously unbeaten service academy team for the second time this season.

Notre Dame’s 49-14 victory over No. 19 Army at Yankee Stadium was in many ways even more dominant than its 51-14 win over Navy at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey last month.

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“They are really athletic and well-coached. They outclassed us,” Army coach Jeff Monken said.

As an independent, the Irish can’t earn one of the first-round byes reserved for conference champions, but they should be well-positioned to host a first-round game and maybe be as high as the fifth seed.  In fact, with all the upsets in the SEC and Big 12, Notre Dame could have some leeway to stumble next week against the Trojans and still make the Playoff.

It would be best if the Irish didn’t tempt fate, but according to The Athletic’s projections, Notre Dame now has a 98 percent chance to make the field and a 72 percent chance to host a game.

ACC at-large?

The SEC’s loss could be the ACC’s gain. With the losses piling up in the SEC, suddenly a matchup of one-loss teams in the ACC Championship Game could earn the conference two playoff spots.

No. 8 Miami (10-1) and No. 13 SMU (10-1) continued to roll toward a showdown in Charlotte, N.C. SMU clinched a berth in the ACC title game in its first season in the conference with a rout at Virginia.

The Hurricanes still must take care of business next week at Syracuse to get to the title game. A loss sends No. 17 Clemson to Charlotte. Speaking of the Tigers (9-2), the Palmetto Bowl against No. 18 South Carolina (8-3) got a lot more interesting on Saturday.

If you squint you can see Playoff implications for the Gamecocks, too. In the pecking order of three-loss SEC teams, South Carolina has to be behind both Ole Miss and Alabama after losing to each. The Gamecocks would be ahead of Texas A&M, but the Aggies can still win their way in through an SEC title.

Got it? Good.

(Photo: Brian Bahr / Getty Images)