As preseason camp begins this month, Land-Grant Holy Land is diving into its final theme every week of the off-season. This week is all about making predictions that may or may not be reasonable, in fact, some might say they are bold. You can catch up on all of the Theme Week content here and all of our ”Bold Predictions” articles here.
In 2024, the first season with a 12-team College Football Playoff, both the SEC and B1G managed to get four teams into the playoffs. The remaining four spots went
to independent Notre Dame and one team each from the ACC, Big 12, and Mountain West conferences.
Though the years of watching seemingly the same four teams occupy the four available playoff spots each year are, thankfully, over, the B1G and SEC continue to be the most dominant conferences, so it’s likely that at least for the foreseeable future, we’ll continue to see similar playoff makeups to last season, with the majority of the teams coming from one of those two conferences.
Though there will be changes to how teams are seeded this season after pushback from last year’s bye weeks, we are still guaranteed to see at least five conferences represented, with one team automatically qualifying from each. The other seven spots? Up for grabs.
And while the SEC will continue to be a dominant conference this season, I’m boldly predicting we’ll see the same conference representation in the CFP, with one slight change: The B1G will take one of the SEC’s four spots to land five teams in the playoffs.
In looking at each of the teams I believe will make it and their schedules, there are two different ways I see this happening. Let’s break it down:
Scenario No. 1:
Given Oregon’s schedule this season, I anticipate them finishing the regular season either undefeated or with one loss. In this first scenario, they finish the season undefeated, defeating Penn State and Indiana back-to-back, both in close games. This gives Penn State and Indiana each one loss.
Penn State is likely to field its best team in years, with Drew Allar returning as the starting quarterback, a top-tier offensive arsenal of weapons that includes returning running backs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton, and the acquisition of former Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles to run their defense. So, as much as this Buckeye fan hates to say it, in both of my two scenarios, Penn State won’t lose again, defeating Ohio State for the first time since 2016.
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Photo by Rich Storry/Getty ImagesThis leaves Oregon undefeated, Penn State with one loss, and Ohio State with one loss, with Penn State winning the tie-break over OSU to make it to the B1G Championship game, given the head-to-head record. Penn State wins the B1G Championship narrowly over Oregon, handing them each one loss, to each other, heading into the playoffs.
Ohio State has the opportunity to further boost its rankings even without a conference title game berth in its season opener against Texas and its regular season finale on the road against Michigan, both games I expect the Buckeyes to win.
But what if that’s Michigan’s only loss on the season? That leaves the Wolverines with one loss. If they’re a one-loss team, however, it means they won road games against Oklahoma and USC, so if they keep it close with the Buckeyes, one loss becomes easy to overlook.
So, how does a fifth team get in there? In this scenario, Indiana comes in as a two-loss team, with close losses to Oregon and Penn State but dominant marquee wins against Indiana and Iowa, both of whom should be good enough to be ranked this season. While two losses might seem like a lot, seven two-loss teams earned bids in 2024, including Georgia, whose two losses included an 18-point loss to then-No.16 Ole Miss, a team that didn’t make the playoffs, and Tennessee, whose two losses included a loss to unranked Arkansas. Indiana, then, can make a strong case for itself with blowout wins over presumably ranked Iowa and Illinois and keeping it close with the top two teams in the conference.
This brings us to our second scenario, bolder in some ways, tamer in others.
Scenario No. 2:
In this instance, all five teams finish the regular season with one loss.
Oregon beats Penn State but loses the following week to Indiana. Penn State loses to Oregon but beats Ohio State and Indiana. Ohio State loses to Penn State but beats Michigan. Michigan only loses the OSU game. Indiana only loses the Penn State game.
Suffice it to say, this throws the B1G Championship down a rabbit hole of tiebreakers, but ultimately, leaves us with four one-loss teams and one two-loss team whose second loss is the conference championship.
The most likely scenario here is that the Committee would weigh strength of schedule and head-to-head results heavily in determining which teams would advance to the playoffs, but if all five teams have better records than the teams from the SEC and other conferences that are on the cusp, it’s hard not to argue for all five to make it.
Certainly, there are a lot of hypotheticals involved that would need to play out perfectly to set this scenario up, and the prediction feels even bolder when you consider how much of an edge the CFP seems to give the SEC for its perceived strength of schedule. Is it improbable that five B1G teams will make the playoffs? Sure. Is it impossible? Not this year.
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