Mandel’s Mailbag: College Football Playoff scenarios, TV expectations for Michigan-Ohio State
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With only two weeks to go, we still have at least one deserving College Football Playoff contender in all five power conferences, with the possibility for two in the SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and even ACC depending on how their championship games play out.
It’s officially time to play the Scenario Game.
What’s the perfect Playoff scenario, and what’s the most Armageddon scenario? I can imagine a few but would like your take. — Jeff H.
The perfect scenario would be four 13-0 teams, something I never, ever would have deemed possible. Presumably, it would be No. 1 Georgia vs. No. 4 Florida State in the Sugar Bowl and No. 2 Michigan vs. No. 3 Washington in the Rose Bowl. The latter would mark a perfect ending to the 77-year-old Big Ten-Pac-12 marriage.
Armageddon begins with Alabama beating Georgia. Oregon loses to Oregon State , but, after Arizona State upsets Arizona , still reaches the Pac-12 title game, where it knocks off Washington. Iowa somehow upsets the Ohio State -Michigan winner (I assume by a 2-0 score), which for these purposes we’ll say is Michigan. Texas loses to Texas Tech but still makes the Big 12 title game and beats whoever emerges from all those tiebreakers. Florida State loses to Florida , and then again to 11-1 Louisville in the ACC title game.
I assume 12-1 SEC champ Alabama and 12-1 Georgia both get in. Louisville, as the only remaining 12-1 champ, gets the third spot. That leaves six contenders for the final berth: 12-1 non-champ Michigan, 12-1 non-champ Washington, 11-1 non-champ Ohio State, 11-2 Pac-12 champ Oregon (which split with Washington), 11-2 Big 12 champ Texas (which beat Alabama) and 11-2 Big Ten champ Iowa (which beat Michigan).
Good luck, committee.
What does the committee do with the fourth Playoff spot if we end the season like this?
OSU/Michigan — 13-0 (Big Ten champ)
Washington — 13-0 (Pac 12 champ)
Florida State — 13-0 (ACC champ)
Texas — 12-1 (Big 12 champ)
Alabama — 12-1 (SEC champ, over Georgia in SEC title game)
Georgia — 12-1 (non-champion) — Jeff R.
I’m going to take this opportunity to recant an earlier position of mine. I was previously adamant there was no way the committee could say with a straight face it’s taking Alabama over Texas, even if that meant leaving out the SEC champ. But I didn’t think that through. If Alabama ends what would by then be a 30-game winning streak for Georgia to finish as a 12-1 SEC champion, the committee would elevate the Tide high enough to plausibly say, “Well, they weren’t close enough to invoke the tiebreaker.”
I bet it would be:
Of course, people would freak out, but Alabama would hold wins over teams currently ranked No. 1 (Georgia), No. 12 ( Ole Miss ), No. 14 ( LSU ) and No. 21 ( Tennessee ), the last three all by two touchdowns. Texas’ would be No. 8 (Alabama), No. 19 ( Kansas State in overtime) and most likely No. 20 ( Oklahoma State ). That’s how the committee would get around that.
It has been nearly two seasons since Brian Kelly and Lincoln Riley’s shocking coaching moves. LSU and USC both have yet to make the Playoff and went backward this season. Notre Dame (Marcus Freeman) and Oklahoma (Brent Venables) have taken a half-step back from where they were before their current coaches. Among these four schools and fan bases, who’s feeling the best? And who is the most nervous? — Tim C., New York, NY
I know LSU hasn’t had the season many of us thought it would, but I wouldn’t be in panic mode about Kelly. For one thing, this “bad” season may produce a Heisman Trophy winner in Jayden Daniels , and with wins over Texas A&M and in a bowl game, it would give Kelly back-to-back 10-win seasons to start his tenure. I know Tigers fans expect national championships, but 10-win seasons generally are viewed as a success.
That’s not to say LSU fans shouldn’t be concerned about Kelly fielding such a terrible defense in Year 2. (It is coincidentally tied with USC at No. 112 nationally). But this is not a Riley situation where the coach has no track record of producing great defenses. If anything, Kelly’s Notre Dame teams were almost the exact opposite identity of his LSU teams — nondescript offenses, stingy defenses. But Kelly is more of a CEO coach than most, which means his teams reflect heavily on his coordinator hires. I assume he’ll part ways with defensive coordinator Matt House after the season and try again.
On the flip side, USC fans should be more than nervous. They should be extremely concerned. Riley had a disastrous second season. He managed to lose five games with Caleb Williams as his quarterback. Unlike at Oklahoma, where he inherited Bob Stoops’ ready-made juggernaut, Riley was hired to rebuild USC’s program from the ground up, and it has gone spectacularly wrong. And that’s before losing Williams, moving to the Big Ten next season and playing a schedule next year that includes LSU, Michigan, Penn State , Washington and Notre Dame.
It’s far too soon to be putting Riley on hot seat lists — he did win 11 games his first season — but nor do I expect athletic director Jenn Cohen to give him the same leeway her predecessors did Clay Helton. Things will get extremely uncomfortable if he goes 7-5 again, or worse, in Year 3.
As for the other two, Venables has rebounded nicely from his disastrous 6-7 debut. Beating Texas and possibly getting to 10 or 11 wins is a solid season. Joining the SEC will present new challenges, for which he deserves some patience for at least the first year, but it’s reasonable to expect OU to be in Playoff contention by the following season.
And Freeman has been all over the map. He got everybody mad with the last-second Ohio State mistake, then got everyone’s hopes back up with the comeback at Duke and the rout of USC and then crushed their spirits all over again with the loss at Clemson . If he can finish strong and get to 10-3, he should go into 2024 on mostly solid footing.
What do you make of the Big 12’s tiebreaker language and (un)willingness to disclose how it works? With seven games, there are a potential 128 scenarios, which seems like a large but not impossible number to deal with. — Matt S.
Only a mere 128 scenarios, you say? I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about how they distribute that info to the masses. I’m more concerned with what this means for the future. If a 14-team Big 12 with the teams playing nine conference games creates this much difficulty in determining the champion, what happens when it expands to 16 next year? And what of the 16-team SEC that refused to add a ninth league game, a 17-team ACC and an 18-team Big Ten, all of whom are abolishing divisions?
No divisions seemed like a great idea at the time — get your two best teams in your championship game, give your Playoff contenders one more chance at a big victory. It won’t seem so smart next season if Ohio State, Washington and Wisconsin — none of whom play each other — all finish 9-0.
These Frankenstein conferences may be great for television, but they’re treading dangerously close to turning their championship races into farces.
If Ohio State loses for a third year in a row, would Ryan Day be compared to John Cooper (a successful coach who could not win against the Wolverines)? — Rob W., Columbia, S.C.
Day, currently 1-2 against Michigan, would still have a long way to go to get to 2-10-1, but he would share one thing in common with Cooper: Losing back-to-back years as an undefeated team. It happened to Cooper in 1995 and 1996, although much more inexplicably given those Wolverines squads were 8-3 and 7-3, respectively. As someone attending a university at the time that reached its first Rose Bowl in 47 years because of the 1995 upset, I will forever be indebted to Michigan’s Tim Biakabutuka.
But Cooper coached in a much different era. He never would have gotten 13 cracks at the apple if he was Ohio State’s coach today. Day has yet to win fewer than 11 games in a full season. Cooper didn’t win nine until his sixth season. He would have been out by then. So really, they’re not remotely comparable. But I’m sure we’ll still hear ridiculous hot seat chatter if Day, who currently holds a .903 overall winning percentage (56-6) and 38-2 in Big Ten play, falls to 1-3 against Michigan.
Using historical precedence, what is the likelihood the NCAA would come in and retroactively vacate wins years down the line if Michigan wins the Big Ten championship and/or the national championship? — DJ, Grand Rapids, Mich.
The thing is, there is no precedent. No case like this has ever occurred, that we know of. In 2015, former Baylor assistant (and current Oklahoma offensive coordinator) Jeff Lebby got caught on Tulsa ’s sideline in a game against the Sooners while ostensibly there to support friend and former Baylor staffer Phillip Montgomery, Tulsa’s first-year coach at the time, while in town for a wedding. Baylor suspended him for a half-game, and the NCAA, which deemed it a Level III violation, accepted that penalty. Some Michigan fans have pointed to that example as evidence that NCAA Bylaw 11.6.1 is a big fat nothing burger.
But there’s quite a difference between that seemingly isolated incident and Connor Stalion’s elaborate spying ring. And now, we have an assistant coach, Chris Patridge, allegedly interfering with the NCAA’s investigation, as well as possible booster involvement. All that is on top of the investigation already underway into Michigan’s impermissible recruiting during the 2020-21 dead period, and it seems likely the school is heading toward more serious charges like lack of institutional control and/or failure to monitor on Jim Harbaugh’s part. There could be suspensions and show-cause orders handed down.
The good news? Even if there are vacated wins, Michigan’s scheme got caught in time that it seemingly would not include any game played since Oct. 14. And the NCAA has no authority in football to vacate a national championship. Unless the Big Ten comes back after the fact and tries to add further punishment, all the vacating of wins would do is turn back the clock on that 1,000-win milestone. You’d keep any 2023 trophies and banners.
Jordan Travis’ gruesome injury likely ends Florida State’s national title hopes. What are your top three injuries that changed a national title race? — Chris M., Charlotte, N.C.
Weirdly, this same thing happened to Florida State 25 years ago. Future Heisman winner Chris Weinke, then a sophomore, suffered a season-ending injury in the 10th game of the season. Backup Marcus Outzen played well enough to lead the Noles over No. 4 Florida in the regular-season finale but was a miserable 9-of-22 for 145 yards and two picks in FSU’s 23-16 BCS championship loss to Tennessee.
In 2007, Oregon was 8-1 and ranked No. 2 when sensational quarterback Dennis Dixon went down in a Thursday night loss to Arizona. That team was good enough to at least play for the natty in a crazy season that saw 11-2 LSU hoist the trophy, But without Dixon, the Ducks finished 9-4 with a Sun Bowl win.
Also in 2007: No. 2 West Virginia only needed to beat 4-7 Pitt in its last game to clinch a spot in the championship game but inexplicably lost 13-9. While we’ll never know if it would have changed the outcome, star quarterback Pat White dislocating his thumb in the second quarter did not help.
More recently, you may recall Tua Tagovailoa’s late-season hip injury in 2019. While the Tide already had lost to Joe Burrow and LSU by then, they were still No. 5 in the committee rankings. Had it been Tua instead of Mac Jones , they probably would have won the Iron Bowl, finished 11-1 and possibly finished ahead of Georgia and Oklahoma for the fourth CFP spot.
And then, of course, there’s the time in 2014 when Ohio State lost J.T. Barrett in the Michigan game, had to play third-stringer Cardale Jones and ... oh right.
In the current climate of college football, would Syracuse be better served to go to the Group of 5 level to be more competitive, or should it continue to take the ACC’s checks and wallow at the bottom of the conference? — Marc H.
If Syracuse left the ACC for the AAC, it would go from making $40 million per year in conference revenue to around $8 million. It has 14 other sports to fund. It can’t do that. But no question, Syracuse football is an odd fit in the ACC. In an ideal world, it would find a way to revive the Big East, with Syracuse playing more of Boston College , Pitt, Miami , West Virginia and UConn and less of Clemson, NC State , Georgia Tech and Wake Forest . But this being college sports, that ship sailed, and now we’re going to put the Orange in the same conference with SMU , Stanford and Cal.
But Syracuse does not have to be hopeless. Pitt won an ACC title two years ago. Wake Forest played for one. Duke has reached eight bowl games during the past 12 seasons. None of these schools have some inherent advantage over Syracuse.
First and foremost, the school needs to invest in football, which these days starts with NIL. While easy to chalk up as an excuse, Dino Babers said in the middle of the season: “Schools like us, we’re not going to have a lot of depth because it gets bought away.” There’s always money in the banana stand, boosters.
And then, of course, Syracuse has to nail its coaching hire. Syracuse has had some pretty ... umm, uninspiring coaches through the years: Greg Robinson, Doug Marrone, Scott Shafer. (Who?) Babers, whom the school hired from Bowling Green , initially seemed like a home run when he led the Orange to 10 wins in his third season, but he blew any momentum pretty quickly and never came close to getting it back.
Kansas found its savior in Buffalo ’s Lance Leipold. Dave Clawson, who was Babers’ predecessor at Bowling Green, has proven to be a perfect fit at Wake. And look at what Jedd Fisch is doing at Arizona. None of these coaches were splashy hires, and all of them took over jobs as hard or harder than Syracuse’s. I don’t have a magic name, but the person does exist.
The Ohio State-Michigan game will be the most watched regular-season game since? —Tom N., Chicago, Ill.
Last year’s edition — also No. 2 vs. No. 3 — drew 17.1 million viewers, the most for a regular-season game since the No. 1 vs. No. 2 LSU-Alabama game in 2011, which hit 20 million. I predict the Michigan cheating/Harbaugh suspended storyline will bump this year’s above last year’s game and land somewhere between 17 and 20 million. Pure guess, but let’s go with 18.2 million.
Were it No. 1 vs. No. 2, Nielsen’s computers would explode.
(Top photo: Frank Jansky / Icon Sportswire via )
