Played In/Played Out: Great escapes for TCU, Auburn
Paste BN Sports is keeping careful tabs on how each week's wins and losses impact the eventual makeup of the inaugural College Football Playoff. If the season ended today, here are three teams moving into the championship picture and three moving out.
Teams that played their way in :
TCU. The Horned Frogs' last five weeks, in brief: Beat Oklahoma, rocket up the polls, have your heart broken by Baylor, trounce Oklahoma State, embarrass Texas Tech and shock West Virginia. It's entirely unsurprising that this run — four wins, with that three-point loss at Baylor — has placed TCU very much in the think of things in the Playoff race, likely among the top one-loss teams heading into Saturday's home matchup with Kansas State. Beating the Wildcats might put TCU into the top four.
Oregon. Put this down in permanent ink: If Oregon runs the table, these Ducks are heading to the Playoff. How could they not? Oregon can simply sit back, take care of business, drop 45 points on Stanford — so much for that Stanford problem — and watch the SEC West Division cannibalize itself during the final month of the regular season. Meanwhile, Oregon is clicking on all cylinders — yes, even the offensive line — just in time for a push toward the conference title. This can only be said of a few teams in the country: Oregon is a Playoff lock with just one loss.
Auburn. Likewise with Auburn. The Tigers did on Saturday what Alabama couldn't back in early October: beat Mississippi on the road. That Auburn scored 35 points may be the most impressive feat of all, seeing that the Rebels hadn't allowed more than 20 points in any game since the tail end of last season. Some of the faces have changed, true, and some of the plays have been tweaked — just slightly, just enough to keeps opponents off balance. But this Auburn team looks strikingly similar to the group that shocked the SEC and reached last season's national championship game.
Teams that played their way out :
East Carolina. As the only ranked team from the Group of Five conferences in the initial Playoff poll, ECU essentially controlled its destiny to one of the premier non-semifinal bowls — especially with Cincinnati and UCF, two résumé builders, coming during the season's final month. Saturday's loss to Temple, fueled by sloppiness and missteps amid rainy weather, drops the Pirates behind Colorado State and Marshall among non-major contenders. It could even move ECU behind Boise State, which has two losses of its own but also possesses highly impressive win against the Rams during conference play.
Georgia. A disaster on any number of levels. There are the Playoff implications: Georgia, once the forgotten team in the SEC, is now simply ignored. There's the hurt it puts on the Bulldogs' SEC hopes. There's the fact that Saturday's loss came to Florida; then there's the fact that Saturday's loss came to this specific Florida team. It wasn't a great day. There's always the East Division, which is still in play, but the Bulldogs have already left two wins on the field through two months.
Utah. There always seemed to be a little smoke and mirrors among Utah's 6-1 start to the regular season — the sense that of the many one-loss contenders in the Pac-12, the Utes' run seemed the least likely to last. Saturday's loss to Arizona State, which continues to make a push of its own for Playoff respect, doesn't necessarily impact a generally positive season for Utah, which needed a solid campaign after a sluggish start to life in the Pac-12; eight or nine wins remains very much in play. It merely drops Utah out of any part of the Playoff conversation.