The Power-5 Conference Most Likely to Be Left out of the CFB Playoff

There are five power conferences in college football but only four spots in the College Football Playoff. Four is one fewer than five. It doesn't take Archimedes to deduce that (at least) one of those conferences will be omitted from the field.

The debate over which conference that will be has dominated the season, the answer seeming to change each passing week. Right now? My answer is probably the Big 12. But I say that knowing all too well that it could make me look like an idiot come Monday.

Why the Big 12? It's a process of elimination, more than anything.

The SEC has four teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 10 including No. 1 Mississippi State—one of two unbeaten teams left from power conferences. The other unbeaten, Florida State, has the ACC in good shape to make the field despite (and in many ways because of) the fact that it's the weakest of the power-five leagues.

The Big Ten, the Big 12 and the Pac-12 are the most likely candidates for exclusion, but the Big 12 sticks out, counterproductively, because it has been the best of that triad this season.

It has been, in a way, too good for its own good.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Eighteen power-conference teams have either zero or one loss after nine weeks. If any of those teams runs the table, there is a good (but not definite) chance they make the playoff. Unless there is another chaotic week such as Week 6 where zero- and one-loss teams start dropping like flies, it is safe to assume, for the time being, that every two-loss team has already been eliminated.

Thus, on raw numbers, the Pac-12 has more playoff contenders (4) than the Big Ten (3) and Big 12 (3). Three of those contenders are non-traditional—Utah, Arizona and Arizona State—and one of them is Oregon, whom many have termed the favorite to win the league.

The Big Ten has Ohio State, Michigan State and Nebraska, the former two of which will play each other Nov. 8 in East Lansing. The loser of that game will be eliminated, but the winner will have an easy path to an 11-1 record and the Big Ten Championship Game. If Nebraska, which doesn't have a ranked team left on its schedule, also finishes 11-1, that game will be a de facto playoff quarterfinal.

The Big 12 has TCU, Kansas State and Baylor, three teams good enough to represent the league with pride in the CFP. The problem with the conference isn't that it lacks quality form; au contraire, it's that the conference has too much quality form. Especially with a nine-game conference schedule, the Big 12 is susceptible to cannibalism.

	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Game 4	Game 5
TCU	@ WVU	vs. KSU	@ KU	@ TEX	@ISU
Kansas St.	vs. OKST	@ TCU	@ WVU	vs. KU	@ BAY
Baylor	vs. KU	@ OU	vs. OKST	vs. TTU	vs. KSU

Kansas State has yet to play TCU or Baylor, setting up a potential nightmare scenario for the conference. If the Wildcats split those games, it could throw the Big 12's playoff hopes out of orbit.

But even if it sweeps or gets swept in those games, there are other pitfalls facing all of these teams.

Chris Jackson/Associated Press

TCU plays West Virginia in Morgantown this weekend. Kansas State makes the same trip to Morgantown in three weeks. Baylor—which plays Oklahoma in Norman in two weeks—saw its own undefeated season slip away in Morgantown two weeks ago.

All of which leads to a counterintuitive hypothesis: The improvement of West Virginia, which by extension means the improvement of the conference, might actually be a terrible thing for the conference.

The Mountaineers played Alabama close in Week 1 and Oklahoma close in Week 4 before finally getting over the hump against Baylor. They did so by holding Baylor to 318 yards of total offense, its lowest output since September 2010.

Their defense has taken an important leap forward, now ranking higher than their offense in Football Outsiders' S&P+ ratings, something Chris Brown of Grantland calls "amazing":

"Holding Baylor to 318 yards and 80 plays is something," head coach Dana Holgorsen said after the win. "We had two starting corners go out in the first half and it didn't change the game plan. We didn't blink. We've been talking about depth for some time…If you've got depth you've got a chance to win these games."

If West Virginia's improved depth—a microcosm of the Big 12's improved depth—is enough for the 'Neers to pull similar upsets over TCU and Kansas State, it could cost the league a spot in the playoff.

And that seems a lot more likely than, say, Oregon State beating Oregon or Penn State beating Michigan State.

Again…the Big 12 is too good for its own good.