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What we learned about the College Football Playoff: Alabama out? Indiana? Welcome to 2024

What we learned about the College Football Playoff: Alabama out? Indiana? Welcome to 2024

The No. 1 team in the country went down. Unlikely unbeatens like Iowa State, BYU, Indiana, Army and Navy stuck around.

What we learned about the College Football Playoff race in Week 8 is that Alabama is in trouble, Indiana is serious, and expansion is working exactly as hoped.

Bama on the edge

There’s a very real chance that Alabama won’t be in the first 12-team playoff.

Alabama-Tennessee was considered a playoff eliminator of sorts since both had already lost this month. That’s an exaggeration, but a second SEC loss at this point in the season would put the loser in a precarious position.

Welcome to the cliff, Crimson Tide. The seventh-ranked Tide lost 24-17 to the No. 11 Volunteers, Alabama’s second loss in Knoxville in the last three years.

Coach Kalen DeBoer’s first Tide team has now lost two of its last three since beating Georgia and rising to No. 1 in the AP poll.

“Yeah, obviously a tough loss, a frustrating loss,” DeBoer said. “You know, we had two now. And we just can’t play team football. Can’t get it together. One side of the ball has outstanding moments and the other side stumbles, you know.”

Georgia, meanwhile, hasn’t lost since blowing a late lead at Alabama, including an emphatic 30-15 win at No. 1 Texas on Saturday night.

“The beauty of this format is that losing a game doesn’t kill you,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian told reporters. “Everything we want is still ahead of us.”

The combination of those two results, plus No. 8 LSU and No. 14 Texas A&M beating Arkansas and Mississippi State and remaining undefeated in the SEC, makes for a wild race in the best conference in the country.

The last time the SEC had zero teams with an undefeated overall record through November was 2007. That year, LSU won the BCS title with two losses.

A two-loss national champion wouldn’t be a surprise this season, but we also shouldn’t assume that 10-2 guarantees a playoff spot – even for an SEC team.

The way things are going, there could be three to five SEC teams with double-digit wins before the conference championship game.

Austin Mock’s latest CFP projections have Alabama at 52 percent with a 9-3 record and just over a shot. According to Mock’s predictions, the Tide are currently the last team standing.

With two conference losses already, it will be a challenge for the Tide to get to the SEC title game. And Alabama still has a trip to LSU that looks more daunting every week.

“There’s certainly a lot coming together for our football team,” coach Brian Kelly said after the Tigers won 34-10 at Arkansas to set up a big game next Saturday at Texas A&M.

The Tide could have the ultimate trump card when it comes time for the selection committee to make a total of seven bids thanks to the win against Georgia, which may be the best team in the country.

The bigger problem for Alabama is avoiding another loss this season. For three straight weeks, the Tide didn’t look like a playoff team.

Who can stop Indiana?

The Hoosiers are real and spectacular. Coach Curt Cignetti’s team overwhelmed Nebraska 56-7 and improved to 7-0. They need to be taken seriously in the Big Ten race as a team with double-digit win potential.

The Hoosiers’ fast start was due to weak competition. Nebraska was considered a kind of progress. Maybe not such a big step up, but still. The Huskers had the sixth-best defense in the country, allowing 4.37 yards per play.

“I guess we passed this test!” Cignetti posted on X.

“I know nationally there’s been a perception that Nebraska has a pretty legitimate defense nationally, so maybe this will open (everyone’s) eyes,” Cignetti told reporters about his machine-like offense, led by Kurtis Rourke. Quarterback Wake, who transferred to Ohio Forest transferred Justice Ellison as a running back and James Madison transferred Elijah Sarratt as a receiver.

For the sixth straight game, the Hoosiers reached the 40-point mark. Their average margin of victory is now 48-14.

The simple question: who will beat these guys?

Washington comes to Bloomington next week, and then the Hoosiers take a trip to Michigan State. Michigan visits in mid-November, and then the Hoosiers have a week off before the biggest Indiana-Ohio State game of all time on Nov. 23 in Columbus. Indiana ends the season as usual against in-state rival Purdue.

It also wouldn’t be wise to rule out Indiana beating Ohio State. They don’t want the smoke from Coach Cigs.

Indiana and its good schedule could be a big topic of conversation when the selection committee begins ranking teams in about two and a half weeks. The Hoosiers’ non-conference schedule was really bad: FIU, Western Illinois and Charlotte. Without Oregon, Penn State and Illinois on the Big Ten schedule, there’s no denying Indiana got a good draw. Welcome to the flip side of an 18-team conference where many of the best teams don’t compete.

Of course, it’s not just who you play, but how you play, and no team in the country plays closer to the ceiling than Indiana.

Mock’s predictions assume Indiana will be the first team eliminated and has a 51 percent chance of making the field. The first CFP Top 25 of the season will be released on November 5th. Is there anything else going on that day?

Ready for a playoff run?

Is it possible that Colorado is somewhat underrated? It’s hard to imagine when you consider what a lightning rod coach Deion Sanders and his staff have been over the last season and a half.

The Buffs improved to 5-2 with a 34-7 win in Arizona, after which Sanders denounced President Barack Obama for playing against the Buffs at a political rally in Tucson earlier in the week.

Colorado has gotten a little better at protecting Shedeur Sanders, who has subsequently played like one of the best quarterbacks in the country. The Buffs have also improved defensively year-over-year, going from really bad to just below average. They have recorded 15 sacks in their last three games, mostly without star cornerback (and receiver) Travis Hunter.

After collapsing after a 3-0 start in Sanders’ first season, Colorado should at least be on its way to a bowl game.

Now, there is no realistic path to the playoffs for Colorado as a team as a whole. The Buffs lopsidedly lost their toughest non-conference game to a dubious Nebraska team, have already suffered a Big 12 loss to No. 17 Kansas State and have no other ranked teams left on their schedule. Mock’s projections give Colorado a 1 percent chance of making the field.

But the Buffs are well-positioned to be in the Big 12 race all the way to the end – a race that could be complicated by the fact that Colorado doesn’t play either No. 9 Iowa State or No. 13 BYU. The Cyclones and Cougars currently sit atop the conference standings at 4-0 after both staged dramatic comebacks late in the fourth quarter to remain undefeated.

Colorado, Cincinnati and Kansas State follow at 3-1. Forget the records: Kansas State had an extremely poor night in Provo, Utah – it happens – but otherwise looked like the class of the conference. But the point of expanding the CFP to 12 teams was to allow many more teams to enter the final month of the season with high-stakes games. Next week in Boulder, the Buffaloes host Cincinnati in a huge Big 12 game involving one of the most interesting teams in the country. Mission accomplished.

Army and Navy are now a combined 13-0 overall and 10-0 in the American Athletic Conference, posting overwhelming victories. Army has not trailed yet this season.

At this point, the possibility of Army and Navy playing in the AAC title game seems fairly likely. Remember that academies do not play conference play during the regular season. Their annual rivalry game is still scheduled for the week after the championship games and the determination of the CFP field.

Tulane plays Navy and will still have some say in who wins the AAC, but the biggest beneficiary of Army and Navy’s success could be Notre Dame.

The Fighting Irish methodically recovered from the upset of Northern Illinois and rattled off five straight wins, beating Georgia Tech on Saturday against the Yellow Jackets’ backup quarterback.

Notre Dame was hoping for a performance boost from games against Florida State (1-6) and USC (3-4) in November. Doesn’t happen.

The Irish play Navy next week at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, home of the Giants and Jets, then return to the New York area the weekend before Thanksgiving to face Army at Yankee Stadium in what is known as Notre Dame’s Shamrock Series to play – basically home games away from home.

The Army and Navy were great stories, but the fact is that their undefeated records don’t have much substance. Especially those of the army.

While a win over the service academies should give the Irish a boost, they’re not the type of opponents Notre Dame could likely use as a quality loss.

Notre Dame’s path to the CFP looks more like win or fail, but perhaps we’re underestimating the likelihood that there are plenty more losses ahead for its other contenders. Mock’s model has Notre Dame with a 70 percent chance of entering the field with a 10-2 record.

That other Big Ten sleeper

Illinois defeated Michigan, which is in danger of becoming the first defending champion since Michigan State in 1967 to finish with a losing record, setting up Illinois’ biggest home game…perhaps ever.

Oregon comes to Champaign next week, giving Illinois a chance to make a crucial difference in the race for the Big Ten Championship.

After the Ducks, the Illini join Minnesota, Michigan State, Rutgers and Northwestern.

(Photo: Butch Dill/Getty Images)