Seven Power 5 teams have reached Selection Sunday unblemished. All seven reached the Playoff.
Twenty-seven Power 5 teams have arrived with one loss. Twenty reached the field; seven were left out. The Sad Seven: 2014 Baylor, 2014 TCU, 2015 Iowa, 2015 Ohio State, 2017 Wisconsin, 2018 Ohio State, 2021 Notre Dame.
Three 1-loss Power 5 conference champions were left out of the field: 2014 Baylor, 2014 TCU, and 2018 Ohio State. The TCU/Baylor situation was unique to the time and will not be repeated again. The Ohio State case is just odd. The Buckeyes' brand is one of the strongest in college football, they started the year ranked No. 5 in the AP and were never ranked lower than 10th, but lost 49-20 to a 3-3 Purdue team the week before the first CFP rankings and never recovered. That also occurred in one of two non-2020 seasons to produce two undefeated teams, Clemson and Notre Dame.
This season will forge a new path, too. Every one of them does. As the race for the 2022 College Football Playoff begins in earnest, here are the contenders*:
Absolutely, No Doubt About It In The Field
Alabama (6-0)
Clemson (6-0)
Georgia (6-0)
Michigan (6-0)
Ohio State (6-0)
Oklahoma State (5-0)
Ole Miss (6-0)
Penn State (5-0)
Syracuse (5-0)
TCU (5-0)
Tennessee (5-0)
UCLA (6-0)
USC (6-0)
That group of 13 teams will be whittled down to a maximum of five, and likely much smaller than that, perhaps even to zero.
Only two of our seven seasons produced more than one undefeated team, which is the same amount of seasons with no unbeatens.
* James Madison (5-0) is barred by NCAA rules from playing in the postseason this year as a reclassifying team... and Coastal Carolina (6-0) has no realistic shot. Cincinnati's 2021 Playoff path was a 2-year journey which included a win over 11-1 Notre Dame, something no Group of 5 team has done this year.
Still Very Much In The Hunt
Kansas State (5-1) -- Let's start here. Since the Big 12 moved to a 9-game, round-robin schedule in 2011, one team (2016 Oklahoma) has gone 9-0, and no one has gone 10-0. The Wildcats do own a loss to Tulane, but at 5-1 the Green Wave are on track to play for the AAC championship so that loss may not be quite the albatross it appeared at the time. K-State also blew out Missouri, something Georgia failed to do. Chris Klieman's team still has AP No. 13 TCU, No. 8 Oklahoma State, No. 22 Texas (in consecutive weeks, after their upcoming off week), plus a trip to defending champion Baylor and No. 19 Kansas. That upcoming schedule will buoy K-State's ability to rise in the rankings, and also endanger their ability to remain on this list.
Oregon (5-1) -- A blowout loss kept 2018 Ohio State out of the CFP, but Game 1 of a new coaching staff, in basically a cross-country road game against the defending national champions will be judged differently by the committee. Georgia 49, Oregon 3 was not Purdue 49, Ohio State 20.
Kansas (5-1) -- On the scale of forgivable losses, falling to a top-20 team by seven points in a game where you lose QB1 ranks pretty high. The Jayhawks still have three ranked teams ahead of them, plus defending champion Baylor, plus a possible Big 12 title game. I can't believe I just typed those words in relation to Kansas football. Lance Leipold's team also has solid-to-good non-conference wins over Houston and Duke.
Texas (4-2) -- Let's start with the obvious: No 2-loss team has ever reached the CFP. 2016 Penn State, 2017 Ohio State, 2018 Georgia, and 2019 Georgia all finished fifth, but those teams either suffered blowout losses (PSU/OSU) or didn't win their conference (UGA). But the committee is likely to view the Longhorns much differently than AP voters, or those four teams above. For starters, Texas is fourth in the Sagarin ratings, fourth in FPI, and fifth in SP+. UT's remaining opponents are a combined 26-7, with a possible Big 12 championship game to follow. The Longhorns are projected to win every game remaining on their schedule, and SP+ has Texas twice as likely to win the Big 12 as anyone else in the conference. Their two losses came by one point to Alabama and by three in overtime on the road at Texas Tech, both without Quinn Ewers.
Honestly, one could make the case Texas belongs in the first group, not this one.
Baylor (3-2) -- The defending Big 12 champions are not ranked, but the various metrics agree this is a top-20 team. The losses came on the road in overtime to BYU, and to an Oklahoma State team that Baylor could potentially pay back in a Big 12 Championship re-re-match. The Bears could potentially roll into Selection Sunday with four consecutive wins over Top 25 opponents.
Mississippi State (5-1) -- Mike Leach's team is firmly in the top 15 in the metrics, with AP No. 22 Kentucky, No. 3 Alabama, No. 1 Georgia, No. 9 Ole Miss, and either No. 1 Georgia or No. 6 Tennessee in the SEC Championship. A 12-1 Mississippi State team is getting in over an undefeated Pac-12/ACC champion if it comes down to it but, let's be honest, it won't come down to it.
Hanging Around, But That's It
Illinois (5-1) -- AP voters have the Illini 10 spots higher than the computers do, the Indiana loss looks worse by the week, and their best non-conference win is over 4-3 Wyoming. Having said that, Illinois has the nation's No. 1 scoring and yards per play defense. The Big Ten West is the sinking tide that drops all boats, but the Illini do have a Nov. 19 trip to face a potentially undefeated Michigan, and then a Big Ten Championship against a potentially undefeated Ohio State or Penn State.
Minnesota (4-1) -- The Gophers are in the 20s in the computers, and they get a road trip to No. 10 Penn State, plus a potential Big Ten Championship, but even then I'm realllly stretching it to include them here. Even if the Gophers go 12-1 and beat Penn State and Ohio State, their other 10 wins will be over New Mexico State, Western Illinois, Colorado, Michigan State, Illinois, Rutgers, Nebraska, Northwestern, Iowa and Wisconsin.
NC State (5-1)
Wake Forest (5-1)
North Carolina (5-1)
Going into the 2015 ACC Championship, North Carolina was 11-1 and facing off against undefeated and No. 1 Clemson... and even with a win the Tar Heels faced uphill odds to reach the top four. The committee ranked 10th going into that game.
NC State and Wake missed their respective opportunities to beat Clemson and though UNC still could, their only other ranked opponents are... NC State and Wake.