By Jay Berry
College basketball has March madness, and college football has November madness. The first year of the 12-team college football playoff has not disappointed.
If fans thought the rankings and season finale were already wild, things perked up even more after week 13. The frenzy started early in the day, with Indiana getting its doors blown off at Ohio State. That was just the pregame for the rest of the day.
Ole Miss traveled to Gainesville to face the revived Florida Gators. After a 28–10 home win against Georgia, the Rebels were ranked 11th and in prime position for a chance at the college football playoff.
Ole Miss’ hopes of an epic season were dashed as they lost to the Gators 24–17 in the swamp. They left Gainesville with a record of 8-3. They have one game remaining against lowly Mississippi State and find themselves at the bottom of a pack of three loss, SEC teams, and even 7–4 LSU, which beat Ole Miss.
The madness didn’t stop there, though. The seventh-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide traveled to Norman, Oklahoma. Many people thought the Sooners were left for dead, coming into this game as a two-touchdown underdog.
However, the Sooner pride showed up on senior night with a masterful defensive performance that held the Crimson Tide to three points and 234 total yards, including just 70 rushing yards. Jalen Milroe’s legs, which have given teams fits all season, had nowhere to run, as Oklahoma held him to just seven yards on 15 carries.
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— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) November 25, 2024
Alabama had no answer for the Sooners’ discipline, physicality, and deception on defense. They disguised their defensive coveragesreally well, got in position to make plays, and tackled well. Alabama became another three-loss SEC team.
As Lee Corso would say, not so fast; one more SEC team with playoff hopes would go down on Saturday night.
The Texas A&M Aggies fell behind early, 21-0, against Auburn. They gave up some big plays early, but they came back to force overtime. In the end, it was the Auburn Tigers who came out victorious. This left Texas A&M with a record of 8–3 and fourth place in the conference.
Alabama is now 6th place in the conference, A&M 4th, and Ole Miss is in 8th place.
The SEC has five three-loss teams, A&M, South Carolina, Alabama, Ole Miss, and shockingly, Missouri, who have yet to look like a top 25 team for many reasons that we won’t get into here.
The top three teams in the SEC with the best chance at the playoff are Texas at 10–1, Georgia at 9–2, and Tennessee at 9-2. Tennessee would be in a good position for a playoff spot if they beat Vanderbilt next week and finished 10–2.
The two teams projected to play in the SEC championship game are Texas and Georgia. Georgia is already heading to Atlanta, as its last game of the season is non-conference against Georgia Tech. In the conference championship game, Georgia will face the winner of Texas versus Texas A&M.
The best-case scenario for the SEC is a Georgia-Texas conference championship game. If a three-loss team makes the conference championship game, all hell would break loose.
It’s also in the conference’s best interest for Georgia to beat Texas in Atlanta to maximize the number of teams to make the playoffs. That would give the conference to two last teams coming out of the conference championship game and two loss Tennessee.
If Georgia loses the conference championship game, they might still qualify as the committee might not penalize them for losing the extra game.
A wild scenario would be if Tennessee, Georgia, and Texas were to lose in the final weekend of the regular season. Texas could still get in with two losses, but Tennessee would add another three-loss team to the conference, and the loser of Georgia-A&M would have four losses.
How many fingernails will get bitten off in the playoff committee room next weekend?
