In the final part of our "What If" exercise, we take a look at the early part of the BCS and apply the proposed 12 team playoff structure to those seasons.
Again, we will just be looking at seeding and early matchups, as the landscape of college football was vastly different at the time.
I think these projections/predictions will be quite boring, and probably not much different from next week.
This is probably the perfect year for exactly a 4-team playoff. I believe it's going to be an easy decision for the top 4, and I think there's only one conference championship that matters. However, there seems to be a lot of people expecting some sort of drama and debate.
Now that the season is over, we now know that the real life championship game is set between two teams from the same division, after a complicated tiebreaker procedure.
Pac-12 North Champion: Washington Huskies (7-2)
Washington was tied with Oregon at 7-2, but had the head-to-head tiebreaker.
The regular season is over, and we just have championship games left.
ACC Championship: Clemson Tigers (8-0) vs. UNC Tar Heels (6-2)
Both teams clinched their divisions by virtue of having the best record in either division. There will be no tiebreakers required in the ACC.
SEC Championship: Georgia Bulldogs (8-0) vs. LSU Tigers (6-2)
Georgia has the best record in the East. LSU has the head-to-head tiebreaker over Alabama, also 6-2.
Big Ten Championship: Michigan Wolverines (8-0) vs. Purdue Boilermakers (6-3)
Both teams clinched their divisions by virtue of having the best record in either division. There will be no tiebreakers required in the Big Ten.
Big 12 Championship: TCU Horned Frogs (9-0) vs. Kansas State Wildcats (7-2)
These teams have the two best records in the conference with no tiebreakers required.
Pac-12 Championship: USC Trojans (8-1) vs. Utah Utes (7-2)
USC has the best record in the conference. Utah, Oregon, and Washington were all tied for the second best record, and it came down to the fourth tiebreaker of opponent win percentages.
I know I said last week that Utah was out of contention and it should have been Oregon or Washington. However, as I was projecting the tiebreakers, I made two errors. First, I forgot that Oregon was 1-1 against the other two teams. But the bigger error was that I forgot to include Oregon State as a common opponent. So that changed the projection from Oregon having the best record among those teams to all three teams still being tied. Honestly, I don't even fully understand step 3 and step 4 looks like a lot of work, so I'll take ESPN's word that this tie is resolved by the 4th step of conference opponent win percentages, and it goes to Utah.
With an extra day of games, including a few key ones, we have a few more conference pieces in place.
During the season, it always looks like the ACC divisional races get complicated and we spend a bunch of time parsing through the tiebreaker scenarios. Now that we have completed the era of ACC divisions, we can take a full look back at 17 seasons of conference play, and see how often the conference actually need to use tiebreakers, and how far they have gone.
With Rivalry Week upon us, and the 3rd-to-last CFP rankings available, I wanted to take a look at the few remaining pieces of this season's conference and NY6 chase.
This is one of the more difficult weeks to do NY6 projections. As you know, at this blog, we don't automatically place the current top four teams in the CFP if we know that they have to face off at some point during the season.
The best part about only having one week left of the regular season is that it really makes for clean "what if" scenarios.
Over in the real world, one participant of the Pac-12 championship game has already been clinched, with two or three teams still vying for the other spot. How does it look in the original version of 2022 with divisions?
Peach and Fiesta Bowls are the semi-finals this year, limiting the at-large positions.
Projected semi-finals:
#1 Georgia vs. #5 Tennessee
winner of #2 Ohio State/#3 Michigan vs. #4 TCU
There's no sense projecting any semi-final that will pit OSU against Michigan again.
Rose Bowl: loser of #2 Ohio State/#3 Michigan vs. #7 USC
Since the winner of OSU/Michigan is projected to eventually win the conference, the Rose Bowl will be looking at the highest ranked Big Ten team remaining. While the Pac-12 still has quite a bit of settling to do in the next week, USC is the highest ranked team at this point.
Sugar Bowl: #6 LSU vs. #19 Kansas State
Both of the normal participants (SEC and Big 12 champs) are projected to be in the CFP, so we just go with the next highest ranked team from each conference. (Or third in the SEC's case, as Tennessee is projected into a semi-final.)
Orange Bowl: winner of #9 Clemson/#13 UNC vs. #8 Alabama
Hedging the bets here, as the ACCCG is a matchup of the two highest ranked teams in the conference, and the winner will go here, barring any craziness in the last two weeks that could catapult the winner into the CFP. On the other side of the matchup, we go with the highest ranked team out of the Big Ten, SEC, and Notre Dame that isn't already committed to the CFP, Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl.
Cotton Bowl: #17 UCF vs. #10 Utah
I haven't looked at the G5 races close enough to see if UCF can actually win their conference, but they are currently the highest ranked G5 team. Meanwhile, Utah is the highest ranked team not already committed to a bowl.
I don't expect any of these matchups to actually happen, though.
Continuing our look at the alternate reality where the Pac-12 has divisions and seeing if that race is any clearer than what we've got going on in the real world.
Two entire championship games are set, and we have a winner-take-all division matchup set. But somehow, one division has managed to completely tie itself into a knot?
Continuing our look at the alternate reality where the Pac-12 has divisions and seeing if that race is any clearer than what we've got going on in the real world.
We have our first championship game participant clenched! And wait...did Alabama just get knocked out of the playoff?
I last did one of these after Week 5; this next one is BEFORE the bulk of Week 10 (technically "during", as the midweek MACtion has already been played).
We now have CFP Rankings to look at, which officially gets us into the race to the finish!
Since the Pac-12 scrapped their divisions this year but kept the schedule, we can track how the season would have gone with divisions and see if we ultimately end up with a different Pac-12 championship.
