Which 1-Loss Team Has Best Shot of Making College Football Playoff?
We've reached mid-October, and finding Power Five teams with unblemished records is becoming more challenging by the week.
Clemson is the only undefeated team left in the ACC. Baylor and West Virginia are carrying the torch for the Big 12. Michigan, Ohio State and Nebraska are holding serve in the Big Ten. Washington is rolling through the Pac-12, and Alabama and Texas A&M are the two standing in the SEC.
They all have clear paths to the College Football Playoff. But who else is in the running?
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The line of one-loss teams waiting just outside the playoff door is longer than those you see at the grand opening of a club in Hollywood.
Which one-loss team has the best chance to make the College Football Playoff?
Easy. It's Tennessee.
Wait, what?
The same Volunteers team that hasn't played a complete game all season, just lost to Texas A&M after committing seven turnovers, is as beat up as any team in the sport and has Alabama coming into Neyland Stadium this weekend?
Yep, that's the one.
The reason is simple—the Crimson Tide are really Tennessee's only hurdle standing in the way of a one-loss season for head coach Butch Jones.
Take a look—via Cole Cubelic of the SEC Network—at the record of opponents Tennessee has already faced when compared to some of the best teams in the country:
After the Alabama game, the Vols have a bye week, play at South Carolina, host Tennessee Tech, Kentucky and Missouri and then travel to Vanderbilt to close the regular season. Because of that schedule, the Vols have a 20.9 percent chance of winning their conference, according to ESPN's Football Power Index—the highest percentage among one-loss Power Five teams.
| Oct. 15 | vs. Alabama |
| Oct. 22 | BYE |
| Oct. 29 | at South Carolina |
| Nov. 5 | vs. Tennessee Tech |
| Nov. 12 | vs. Kentucky |
| Nov. 19 | vs. Missouri |
| Nov. 26 | at Vanderbilt |
That one hurdle is a big one, of course. And the fact that cornerback Cam Sutton is out for an extended period of time, linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin is out for the year, running back Jalen Hurd missed the A&M game and is fighting through multiple injuries, defensive lineman Danny O'Brien was carted off the field last week and several other Vols are either out or questionable doesn't help matters at all.
But what do we know about the Vols? They're fighters.
"This team has been really flatlined, very levelheaded," Jones said after the Texas A&M loss. "Never too high, never too low. Just like our talk in the locker room, they're very, very disappointed. We'll get back to work and you can't be (emotional). Because now you have Alabama coming in. And that's life in the Southeastern Conference. It's not for everyone. The toughness that's involved day-to-day, week-to-week—the grind."
Even in the loss to Texas A&M, Tennessee proved what it actually was—a team that does whatever it takes to find a way. For the third consecutive week, Jones' crew found itself down three scores and successfully erased those deficits.
That matters.
Of course, it's not ideal that Tennessee consistently plays up or down to its competition on any given week and can't seem to get things going out of the gate no matter the magnitude of the game. But the Vols have proved, at their best, that they can compete with any team in the country.
Why not another one-loss team such as, say, Louisville?
Fair or not, conference championships matter to the College Football Playoff selection committee. It's right there, listed first among criteria considered on the CFP website. For the record, that is ridiculous since winning your conference—conferences are loosely determined by geography and have nothing to do with football—isn't an indicator of overall team strength or weakness.
Can Louisville win the ACC?
FPI says the conference win percentage for the Cardinals is 7.2 percent, but they also have the highest win-out percentage in the country (56.9 percent). That's likely due to the fact that they don't hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over undefeated Clemson after losing 42-36 earlier this month, and Clemson's ACC schedule for the remainder of the season includes hosting North Carolina State, a trip to visit a down Florida State team, home games against Syracuse and Pitt and a trip to Wake Forest.
That's not exactly a gauntlet, especially considering Clemson would have to lose two of those for Louisville to win the division.
What about Wisconsin?
According to the FPI, the Badgers have a 7.5 percent chance to win the conference. They have a loss to Michigan already in the books, face Ohio State this weekend and have a trip to Iowa and a home game against undefeated Nebraska after that. That's a gauntlet by Big Ten West standards, and it will be tough to navigate through unscathed.
Even if Wisconsin does, that's not good enough to unseat a one-loss SEC champ in the minds of the selection committee if that's the way the season shakes out—or perhaps even a one-loss conference champion from another Power Five conference depending on the specifics.
Over in the ACC Coastal, Virginia Tech and Miami will play each other on Oct. 20. Even though both have looked strong this season, the winner will still have to separate itself from the rest of a division that has proved over the years that it's fully capable of chewing itself up.
Houston has the chance to get back in the good graces of the selection committee if it tops Louisville in mid-November. But even if it adds that victory to the season-opening win over Oklahoma on its resume, a one-loss Group of Five champion is going to have a hard time topping any one-loss Power Five champ. The Cougars need mass chaos to have a chance, even if they run the table.
If Tennessee can clear the Alabama hurdle—which, again, is a rather large one—it has smooth sailing to the SEC Championship Game, where it will be 60 minutes away from a playoff berth.
No other one-loss team in America can say that.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Statistics courtesy of CFBStats.com unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information is courtesy of Scout.com. Odds provided by Odds Shark.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and national college football video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a host on Bleacher Report Radio on SiriusXM 83. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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