In college football, the 2007 season is the gold standard for insanity. Every year, we spend eight months collectively talking ourselves into how the season will play out, then we're somehow shocked when the outcomes of hundreds of games, involving thousands of players and coaches, inevitably don't align with our ill-informed preconceived notions. (The NFL is actually worse about this, I've found.) We tell ourselves every season is crazy, but 2007 really was crazy: 24 teams ranked in the top 10, Rutgers and Hawaii among them; Cal, South Florida, Boston College and Kansas were top-3 teams at one point; Missouri at No. 1 after the regular season; and the only 2-loss national champion to date.
The 2023 season will be go down as the anti-2007 -- the season remembered for how un-crazy it was.
Case in point: the top eight teams in the AP poll on Oct. 29 were Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida State, Washington, Oregon, Texas and Alabama. One month later, the top eight teams in the AP poll are... Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Florida State, Washington, Oregon, Texas and Alabama.
Washington and Florida State posted undefeated regular seasons, and never cracked the top two at any point.
But perhaps the best example of how unique this season played out is Alabama. The Crimson Tide completed an 8-0 SEC regular season -- and never climbed higher than No. 8. After dropping from No. 3 to No. 10 following the Texas loss, then to No. 13 following a win over South Florida that felt, smelled and tasted like a loss, Alabama moved to No. 8 and hasn't budged. That is insane.
Since 1992, 20 SEC teams have posted 8-0 regular seasons. Eleven of them entered December ranked No. 1 -- including the last eight, other than this Tide team. Four were ranked No. 2, including the 2009 Bama team that was only No. 2 because Florida was No. 1. In fact, until this year, since '92 no SEC team had ever gone 8-0 and been lower than fourth in the AP poll -- and Alabama is No. 8.
The team that beat Alabama, Texas, jumped from No. 11 to No. 3, then fell to No. 8 following its Oct. 7 loss to Oklahoma. Two weeks later, the Longhorns moved to No. 7, and for six straight weeks Bevo has hit his horns against a glass ceiling. After losing to No. 3 Michigan, voters in the AP, Coaches, and FWAA-NFF polls all dropped Ohio State from No. 2 to... No. 6.
Texas needs Florida State or Michigan to lose their respective conference championship games to have a prayer at reaching the Playoff, and even then it may not be enough. Again, that is insane. In nine previous iterations of the Playoff, only one 12-1 Power 5 champion has missed the CFP. That team, 2018 Ohio State, lost 49-20 to a 6-6 Purdue. Texas lost on a touchdown pass with 15 seconds to play to a 10-2 Oklahoma on a neutral field. In a sport where all too often the amount or quality of losses is the first (or only) criteria by which teams are judged, that's about as "good" a loss a team can have.
Yet, the teams ahead of them either haven't lost, or have "better" losses than Texas. Oregon lost to undefeated Washington on the road on a missed field goal as time expired. Ohio State had a chance to beat undefeated Michigan on the road in the final minute.
In terms of quality of losses, those are all prime Kate Upton, Brooklyn Decker and Heidi Klum. Take your pick.
People will be mad at the committee no matter what happens, but they didn't choose this predicament, reality did. Eight 1-loss-or-fewer Power 5 teams enter Championship Weekend, the most in the Playoff era. Two are set to lose this weekend (Georgia/Alabama, Oregon/Washington), but it's possible we could still be left with eight deserving teams come Selection Sunday.
Unless fate intervenes -- and fate has almost always intervened, until this year -- there's no way out of this.
Yet, fate has a way of pushing college football forward. It was the 1997 season where undefeated Michigan never met undefeated Nebraska that gave us the Bowl Championship Series. It was a 2011 season where 12-1, Big 12 champion Oklahoma State was bypassed for 11-1, SEC West runner-up Alabama for a rematch with LSU that gave us the Playoff.
The 12-team Playoff is coming in 2024 regardless of how 2023 played out, but the College Football Gods, benevolent and angry as they are, designed this season to show us what's coming is necessary.
This is the 10th and final season of the 4-team CFP. In no season has there ever, truly, been five teams for four spots, until now, when we could have as many as eight. Because of course.
With the 12-team CFP, the expansion of the SEC and the Big Ten and the dissolution of the Pac-12, we knew going in this fall would be the last of its kind. We just didn't know it would be the strangest, least strange season of all time.