Doomsday Scenario: Could the SEC Be Shut Out of the College Football Playoff?

LSU beat Ole Miss on Saturday, and now the SEC fan who covets national championships is thinking Doomsday Scenarios as far as the College Football Playoff. This conference is tyrannical. You knew that, right?     

East	SEC	Overall
West	SEC	Overall
Georgia	4-1	6-1
Missouri	3-1	6-2
Kentucky	2-3	5-3
Florida	2-3	3-3
South Carolina	2-4	4-4
Tennessee	0-4	3-5
Vanderbilt	0-5	2-6
Mississippi St.	4-0	7-0
Ole Miss	4-1	7-1
Alabama	4-1	7-1
Auburn	3-1	6-1
LSU	3-2	7-2
Texas A&M	2-3	5-3
Arkansas	0-4	4-4

Here is one scenario: Auburn loses to Ole Miss this Saturday, and the Tigers have two losses. Alabama gets to two losses with a loss at LSU. Georgia with a loss to Auburn will have two losses. Mississippi State loses at Alabama and at Ole Miss and has two losses. Ole Miss takes its second loss in the SEC title game against Georgia.

Every SEC contender has two losses.

Is the SEC champion—with two losses—assured of an automatic bid to the College Football Playoff? I think so, but I don't know. FSU looks like a given (we'll see this Thursday at Louisville). Could one-loss Michigan State, or one-loss Oregon, or one-loss Baylor/TCU be in the CFP ahead of a two-loss SEC team?

Notre Dame looked pretty sharp in Tallahassee. The 12 people on the playoff committee saw that last-second loss. The problem for the Irish is playing 12 games. Notre Dame still needs to rock a few teams left on its schedule to have any chance (Arizona State is a good team, and so is USC).

That crooked number "2" will weigh on people picking four teams. For all the data the committee will be handed, they still have been conditioned by decades of conventional thinking: wins and losses. Suddenly, 12 people could be thinking: "The SEC is a terrific conference, but it doesn't have a terrific team." "They look good on their home field. What about a neutral field?"

Then there is the Bob Stoops background noise. The SEC's superiority is a myth. You see that sloppy Ole Miss offense? You see the threadbare look of the Auburn defense vs. South Carolina?

So come to the edge of your seats for this last month of the season. Could Goliath—the SEC—be left at home for the playoffs? SEC teams can make SEC teams look bad. A columnist smarter than me sent a message about Doom for the SEC.

I have no idea what is going to happen with the SEC West. Neither does anyone else. It's like spinning a Roulette Wheel. The kids who play this game are well-trained, intense, talented and have football IQs through the roof, but they are not robots. They have good days and bad days. Ole Miss' Bo Wallace, who was having a good season, had a bad night in Death Valley. Geez, that's never happened before to a quarterback in that place.

This is going to be fun. We're about to add drama, burn brain cells and make a sponsor giddy because so many people are paying attention to the CFP brand when the rankings come out Tuesday. The NFL doesn't have anything like this.

Wade Payne/Associated Press

The first four on Tuesday could be Mississippi State, Florida State, Alabama and Auburn. So far, so good for the SEC. The Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten will howl and then hope the SEC really is a beast and eats its own.

There is plenty of time for Ole Miss and Georgia to get into the top four. Or not. There is plenty of time for Mississippi State, Alabama and Auburn to get knocked out of the top four. Or not.

Johnny Majors, the former Tennessee coach, told me almost 30 years ago that he didn't know when the SEC would win another national title because the conference was too deep with good teams. The SEC was in a 12-year drought (Georgia, 1980 to Bama, 1992). "We beat each other up too much now," he said.

The dilemma for the SEC is still the same, three decades after it grew into the best conference in college football. These very good teams have to play each other week after week after week. Dents are coming. Alabama has to play at LSU on November 8, and you just witnessed what happened in front of the frothing fans in the improved 100,000-seat Tiger Stadium. Ole Miss, a good team, scored seven points. LSU has grown in a month. Alabama has already lost on the road to a ferocious Ole Miss defense.

Mississippi State has to play at Alabama on November 15 and will be well-rested. It was a nice bit of scheduling by the Bulldogs to have UT-Martin in Starkville on November 8 while Alabama is in a battle with LSU. Dan Mullen and Scott Stricklin saw this team coming. Auburn has to play at Ole Miss, at Georgia and at Alabama. 

Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

This is going to be one amazing stretch in the SEC, which may be too good for its own good. We're about to see why I wrote this column in September that the College Football Playoff Committee should have front-row seats on the sidelines for a closer look, or be made up entirely of scouts. The 12-person committee has to determine if the offense-first teams in the Pac-12 and Big 12 could score on Alabama, Ole Miss, Mississippi State and Auburn. How do you do determine that watching TV? How do you compare?

SEC fans berated other conferences for insisting that only conference champions get in the College Football Playoff. That was when SEC fans thought it would have at least two one-loss teams and they didn't want to be limited to one team in the CFP.

What if the SEC champ has two losses? "Hey, conference champions get in!" will come the cry from the south.

Here are some things to consider:

• Ole Miss had serious injuries against LSU on Saturday night. Its best offensive player, left tackle Laremy Tunsil, was injured in the second half. Its best defensive player, tackle Robert Nkemdiche, was on the sidelines part of the second half. If Ole Miss regroups and gets healthy, will it get some slack for having two losses?

• The Big 12 plays just 12 games, but it plays everybody in its conference. Notre Dame plays just 12 games also.

• Strength of schedule also looms. Analyst Jeff Sagarin says the toughest schedules are all in the SEC: Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama and Florida. But we also have to consider your opponents' record and your opponents' opponents' record.

• There is, of course, head-to-head. Think about TCU bashing West Virginia on the road this Saturday and then being compared to two-loss Alabama, if it is the SEC champion. Bama beat WVU earlier this season, 33-23.

Before this is all over, somebody is going to go out to the slag heap to fetch one of those BCS computers and declare unbiased computers are the way to go. The SEC fan, with its two-loss champion, will not be one of those people.

Ray Glier covers college football for Bleacher Report. He has covered college football and various other sports for 20 years. His work has appeared in USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera America. He is the author of How the SEC Became Goliath (Howard/Simon & Schuster, 2013). All quotations were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.