Copyright outkick
We've officially entered November, and it's time for the playoff analysis to begin in earnest. Which is great because the biggest story in October has been all the coaches getting fired. We have jobs open at LSU, Florida, Penn State, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, UCLA, and probably some other big schools by the time this column publishes early on Sunday morning. Certainly Hugh Freeze can't feel good about his job stability at Auburn after losing 10-3 at home to the Kentucky Wildcats. But by my count, there are roughly 30 teams with playoff heartbeats still alive. Now some of those heartbeats are faint, but they are still there. And that to me feels like a good thing for college football as we get the first playoff rankings this weekend. So let's dive into the playoff picture in the Starting 11. 1. Miami lost again as a double-digit favorite Every September we convince ourselves Miami is one of the best teams in the country. And then, come the back half of the season, the wheels start to come off. Well, the wheels are off now as the Hurricanes have lost two of their past three games, both as double-digit favorites. I think Miami will lose another game and erase all playoff hopes, but if they do win out to finish 10-2 Miami, having beat a 10-2 Notre Dame (assuming the Fighting Irish win out), that would be a fun debate. The most interesting thing about Miami's collapse might well be how upset that makes Notre Dame fans. Because if Miami falters, how good does the Notre Dame resume actually look? And if you're a Miami fan, at what point do you start asking what else you can do for Mario Cristobal? This is year four for Cristobal, and he's 14-14 in the ACC, just 2-2 this year. 2. Texas played great for the first three quarters against Vanderbilt and then survived a late rally to keep Longhorn playoff hopes alive It sounds crazy given the overtime games against Kentucky and Mississippi State, but if Texas pulled off an upset over Georgia next weekend and found a way to win out, the Longhorns would likely be going to Atlanta to play for the SEC championship. Which would definitely put them in the playoff again. I don't think that's very likely, but given Georgia's wobbliness so far this year, the Bulldogs being behind in the second half at some point to Texas wouldn't be a crazy prediction. Arch Manning played well and maybe, just maybe, Texas saved their season with a phenomenal comeback at Mississippi State. As for Vanderbilt, the late rally from Diego Pavia helped to cover up the fact that the Commodores couldn't get off the field on defense for most of the day. Texas beat Vandy pretty solidly for the first three quarters of the game. But if Vandy beats Auburn and Kentucky in Nashville — and those games may very well be closer than anticipated — then the game in Knoxville against Tennessee could be a playoff game for Vandy and a meaningless game for Tennessee, relatively speaking. In other words, the loss for Vandy was disappointing, but the Commodores needed to go at least 3-1 down the stretch to be a playoff team, now they have to go 3-0. 3. Oklahoma ended Tennessee's playoff chances as the Vols choked away a home game in Neyland with a cavalcade of errors, particularly in the first half I'll get to Oklahoma in a moment, but this was a bad home loss for Josh Heupel's Vols. Maybe it was too much to expect that, with all the Nico drama, the Vols would be able to plug in Joey Aguilar this spring and ride him to the playoff, but Aguilar had his worst game as a Volunteer quarterback and Tennessee managed to find itself down six points at the half despite dominating the total yardage battle and controlling possession. Oklahoma stayed alive because their kicker in panties drilled long-range field goals of 55, 55 and 51 yards. Good for him, Tennessee should get a pair for their kicker who has choked away two huge kicks against Georgia, which would have won the game, and against Oklahoma, which could have potentially changed the outcome. The 12-team playoff is great if your team is a contender late in the year, but it's also a season-ender when you think your team is playoff caliber and they're eliminated with several weeks left in the season, like Tennessee is now. Truth be told, I don't really care what happens against Florida and Vanderbilt that much now. Sure, winning is nice, I suppose, but the point of being excited about a bowl game is gone. A bowl game used to be a reward for a decent season, but if you miss the playoff, who cares if you're 9-3 or 7-5? I mean, no one in the NFL cares about a team's record if they miss the playoff. I think this is why playoff creep is going to be inevitable. When your season is playoff or bust, there's not much point in a season when you go bust. I mean, who wants to travel to watch a meaningless bowl game when there are a dozen teams in the playoff? Ultimately, bowl games may rate decent on television — I mean football on TV is better than football not on TV — but I think selling tickets for them is going to become next to impossible. As for Oklahoma, this was a big win for Brent Venables, but I suspect both his Sooners and the Volunteers will end up around 8-4 and both fan bases will be disappointed when the season ends. Tennessee had a small, but real, shot of getting to 10-2, I don't think Oklahoma has much of a shot based on their remaining schedule as I'll discuss below. But if Oklahoma had lost this game, another 7-5 caliber season would have been in play, including a second half of the season collapse, which would have put immense pressure on Venables. Now the Sooners kept their playoff heartbeat alive and won in what was as electric of a night environment in Neyland Stadium as exists anywhere in football. So the Sooners deserve credit for that, especially for staying alive early when Tennessee came out of the gate white-hot. And John Mateer was a warrior, he took a ton of hits and kept his team's playoff heartbeat alive after a really tough home loss to Ole Miss. 4. N.C. State beat Georgia Tech soundly in Raleigh to make the ACC look like a one-bid league Georgia Tech's path to the playoff remains pretty simple — win the ACC. But this loss means the Yellow Jackets basically have to win out if they're not winning the ACC to have any shot at the playoff. And the problem with winning out from here is it means they'd have to beat Georgia. (This is certainly doable, they almost did it last year and Georgia has been losing in the second half against pretty much every power conference opponent all year.) But the margin for error for Georgia Tech is now virtually gone. It's win the ACC title or win every other game and then hope 11-2 is good enough to get in. Right now, the ACC is likely to be a one-bid playoff league. It's still possible, I suppose, that Georgia Tech and Miami could both run the table and neither one could win the ACC title and, in that manner, the ACC could steal another bid, but based on the way both teams played on Saturday, it feels unlikely that both of them would run the table or that another team, Virginia or Louisville, let's say, would win the ACC and either team would run the table from here on out. Why does that matter? Because it opens up the playoff door since we also expect the Big 12 will only get one playoff team in as well. If that's true then after the non-power four conference team bid there would be nine playoff spots open for the SEC, the BIg Ten, and Notre Dame. 5. The SEC now has eight teams alive for the playoff Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia and Ole Miss are all favorites to make the playoff and probably still have a mulligan left on their schedules too, needed or not. What about the remaining four teams still alive? I think you would have to rank the teams in this order on the likelihood they win out. Vanderbilt has the easiest path: Auburn, Kentucky, at TennesseeTexas has at Georgia, Arkansas, Texas A&MOklahoma has at Alabama, Missouri, LSUMissouri has four games left: Texas A&M, Mississippi State, at Oklahoma, at Arkansas I suspect Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri will each lose their next SEC games, and we'll be talking about Vandy as the only remaining SEC team outside the top four with a playoff heartbeat left. 6. Auburn's home loss to Kentucky likely opens up the Auburn coaching job But, my goodness, who is everyone going to hire? It's already contract extension season for Curt Cignetti at Indiana, Matt Rhule at Nebraska, and Rhett Lashlee at SMU. Lane Kiffin is still out there, but if his Ole Miss team makes the playoff it's going to be hard for him to leave. It really may be the case that James Franklin, who Penn State fired, is the most successful coach on the market. And lots of schools may end up with youngish coaches, especially if guys like Jeff Brohm, Clark Lea and Brent Key aren't interested in trying to cash in and move to new jobs. And how about Kentucky fans being ready to fire Mark Stoops? But then he goes and beats Hugh Freeze, and now he may have gotten Auburn to fire Freeze instead. Wild times. You're either in the playoffs or you hate your coach. That's basically the stakes. 7. What Big Ten teams outside of Indiana, Ohio State and Oregon are in the mix for the playoff? In the same way, I think 10-2 gets a fifth SEC team in, I think 10-2 puts a fourth Big Ten team in play too. So other than the three teams I laid out above, you have four two loss teams still in the playoff mix in the Big Ten: Michigan, Iowa, Washington and USC. This is interesting for Oregon, in particular, because the Ducks still play at Iowa, USC, and at Washington — with 6-3 Minnesota tossed in for good measure. My point on this? Oregon could still lose a couple of games and knock themselves out of the playoffs. That's not an easy four-game slate remaining, much more difficult than anything Indiana and Ohio State have left. (The Buckeyes and Hoosiers have one team with a winning record left on their combined schedules.) So the Big Ten still has seven teams alive for the playoff, and the SEC has eight. 8. Ohio State is undefeated, but has played one game that anyone has watched — against Texas in week one This week's Penn State game was supposed to be a huge showcase game for them, but the Nittany Lions dropped the ball and, as a result, Ohio State might play only one ranked Big Ten team all year — Michigan to end the season. Ohio State fans keep chirping me because I don't have them ranked, but the resume, honestly, isn't great because the schedule, honestly, hasn't been great. There just haven't been many challenging teams on the schedule or even many games worth watching. Partly that's a credit to Ohio State's dominance, but it's also about the failure of the Big Ten to create solid, middle tier teams. There's just a void there right now. Deep down, I think Buckeye fans envy the big game match-ups in the SEC. And for a great national TV draw like the Buckeyes, Ohio State loses out when the Big Ten slate is this weak. If Michigan were to lose another game, they'd potentially not play a top 25 opponent after week one. And even now is anyone outside of Michigan and Ohio State fans really that excited about watching this game? 9. Many of you weren't able to watch college football games on ESPN or ABC because of the YouTube carriage battle currently underway First, this is absurd for fans to be held hostage like this with carrier disputes between companies worth $200 billion — Disney/ESPN — and $3.4 trillion — Google/YouTube. Maybe you guys could figure this out and not make the average sports fans the victims of your respective greed. Second, I think this dispute exposes ESPN's reliance on SEC sports. ESPN's roster of sports has been significantly diminished over the past several years. ESPN has one game a week from the NFL, one third of the NBA, the NHL, the ACC and the SEC. (And half the Big 12). But they don't have any Major League Baseball, no UFC, no real soccer, at least right now, to speak of, none of the Big Ten. I would argue the only people who really desperately need ESPN are SEC fans because ABC/ESPN has all the SEC football, basketball and baseball. So now ESPN is leaning on SEC fans to try and force a deal with Google/YouTube. But something to think about — what happens if ESPN doesn't keep the SEC when this deal runs out in the early 2030's? Or what happens if Google/YouTube plans to outbid ESPN down the line for the SEC? The 2030's will be here before you know it. The history of ESPN has been that they can always leverage angry sports fans to ensure their network gets carried at a premium price — and I would bet that ultimately happens here too — but if YouTube holds the line for a couple of months, ESPN's leverage actually collapses. Once football season is over, does anyone care that strongly about basketball? I'm skeptical. Again, these disputes always settle, but if Google/YouTube, which is a three trillion dollar company — they are 15x the size of Disney — that doesn't have to do a deal here really holds the line, once Thanksgiving passes, the pressure diminishes a bit. Sure, you have the college football playoff, but that's during the holidays when people are out in bars and restaurants way more. And it's only a few games. I'm genuinely curious to see how this goes. Google is a way bigger foe than ESPN is used to battling. I'm going to write more on this. 10. My Outkick Top Ten Look, I'm not happy with my top ten here because, honestly, I don't think there are ten teams worthy of being ranked in the top ten right now. After the top eight, everyone has pretty significant resume flaws. I can't put Notre Dame above Miami as the top two-loss team based on the Fighting Irish loss and the SEC teams with two losses all have pretty bad losses too. So this is where I am: 11. My SEC power rankings 1-16 The top eight teams remain alive for the playoff and the bottom eight teams are now eliminated.
