SEC Football Q&A: Would Loss to Alabama End Mississippi State's Playoff Hopes?
It's mid-November, and here we are with only two SEC teams with fewer than two losses.
That may change on Saturday, as No. 1 Mississippi State (9-0) will travel across the border to take on No. 4 Alabama (8-1) in a game that will serve as an elimination game for the Crimson Tide and further define the evolving College Football Playoff picture.
Is it also an elimination game for the top-ranked Bulldogs? Would a two-loss SEC champion have a shot at the four-team tournament? Just how good is Texas A&M?
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Those questions are answered in this week's SEC Q&A:
It depends on how things shake out around the country. If the chalk holds, yes, it will eliminate Mississippi State from Playoff contention.
Judging from their first two weeks of rankings, the only way that I thought the selection committee would take two teams from the SEC is if Mississippi State and Auburn both won out. That would have put Mississippi State in the No. 1 slot and Auburn, which would have had to run a gauntlet of its own, no worse than No. 3.
Auburn's 41-38 loss to Texas A&M last week allows the committee to hit the reset button—and do so with teams from various conferences from around the country.
If Alabama beats the Bulldogs, the Crimson Tide would be No. 1 or No. 2 next week along with Florida State, Oregon and TCU or Baylor in the four-team bracket assuming no upsets happen this weekend. Those are four teams from four different conferences not including Ohio State, which has a relatively clear path to the Big Ten championship. Conference titles are a point of emphasis for the committee, and we won't know how much until Selection Sunday.
My gut feeling is that the Bulldogs would be behind the Buckeyes in the Playoff pecking order assuming the chalk holds. That shouldn't be the case because winning a conference title only has a loose correlation to being an elite football team—especially since all conferences aren't created equal.
An increased emphasis on conference championships does correlate with expanding Playoff fields. That could lead to a devastating case of Playoff buyer's remorse in Starkville.
Of course, it might not matter. Mississippi State could still win out and, if Auburn beats Alabama in the Iron Bowl, would still go to Atlanta.
It's certainly possible. It may be one of those Lloyd Christmas "one in a million" shots from Dumb & Dumber, but it's possible nonetheless.
If that SEC team is Georgia, Auburn or Ole Miss—all of which still have an outside shot of making it to Atlanta—it'd have a reasonably strong case to be the top two-loss team in the country. That'd place it behind Florida State, Oregon/Arizona State, TCU, Baylor and Ohio State if those teams win out, but it wouldn't take too many dominoes to fall for a two-loss team to get into the mix.
A two-loss Missouri team wouldn't get the same benefit of the doubt, though. The Tigers are currently unranked, and games vs. Texas A&M, Tennessee and Arkansas won't move the meter with the selection committee all that much. Toss in a home loss to Indiana on the resume, and the Tigers are out.
We've seen chaos happen down the stretch several times, including last season when Michigan State's upset of Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game cleared the road for Auburn to head to Pasadena for the BCS National Championship Game.
If one or two dominoes fall, a two-loss SEC champ could follow in its footsteps. Now, a real curveball would be if a two-loss SEC East team wins the SEC title over Alabama, and one-loss Mississippi State is sitting there waiting.
Good luck with that scenario, selection committee.
No, I don't think so, and I was surprised to see the Aggies at No. 24 in the College Football Playoff rankings.
The Auburn win was impressive, no doubt. And as I wrote earlier in the week, the future looks very bright in College Station.
But the 59-0 Alabama loss is still something that won't sit well with the selection committee, the team was wildly uncompetitive during the three-game SEC losing streak, and it isn't like the Aggies earned style points in the Louisiana-Monroe win.
Should Texas A&M be ranked in the Top 25 by the committee at the end of the season? Absolutely. It should take care of Missouri and LSU at home to close the season and slide into the bottom of the rankings.
That'd be a huge step forward for a program that looked lost just one week ago, give the youngsters confidence heading into bowl practice and give the program a ton of momentum heading into a big offseason.
Barrett Sallee is the lead SEC college football writer and video analyst for Bleacher Report as well as a co-host of the CFB Hangover on Bleacher Report Radio (Sundays, 9-11 a.m. ET) on Sirius 93, XM 208.
Quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. All stats are courtesy of CFBStats.com, and all recruiting information is courtesy of 247Sports. Follow Barrett on Twitter @BarrettSallee.
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