Creating chaos: How Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma can miss playoff

Clemson and Alabama remained the top two teams in the third-to-last committee rankings.

For lovers of chaos, in some ways we’ve already won.

The presence of Prosise would obviously have a huge impact on the ground game, but Notre Dame’s offense through the air partially relies on his presence as well.

Notre Dame wide receiver Chris Brown is the only Notre Dame player from SC.

BEST OF REST: Football: No. 18 Ole Miss at No. 21 Mississippi State (4:15 p.m., ESPN2 (31)), No. 13 Florida State at No. 12 Florida (4:30 p.m., ESPN (30)).

There’s nothing quite like this time of year, when the leaves change and a stiff, cool wind blows from the northeast, and college football as we know it is reduced to its most simplistic terms.

A win against OU will surely impress the committee, with how impressive OU has looked down the final stretch. The Sooners will need star quarterback Baker Mayfield to step up with a strong performance on the road against an Oklahoma State side that came up short last week against Baylor, but will be gunning for a measure of redemption.

Can Baylor get back into it?

This is the last chance for the Fighting Irish to show their credentials to the committee, the same for Oklahoma. And there’s that common opponents thing again.

The question is ultimately this for Notre Dame: will the committee favor a one-loss independent or a one-loss conference champion? Both Alabama and Florida must win out to reach the CFP.

Saturday’s game against Florida State is an opportunity for the Gators to make a statement to the selection committee. Like once in a decade lucky.

Notre Dame has made it to the final week of its regular season with just one loss, a two-point defeat at Clemson.

Before you discredit all of these upset scenarios as unbelievable or impossible remember that the road to the national championship is paved with the broken dreams of teams who got upset in the final week(s) of the season. A win would help its strength of schedule, which has been depleted thanks to disappointing seasons from Texas, USC and Georgia Tech, but the Fighting Irish can not win a conference championship next week because if their independent status, which might, in the end, hurt them.

“…They have so many other great qualities as a football team, that if that’s our weakness where we feel like we’ve got the game in control, we’ll try to work through that one”. “We don’t speak in terms of bad loss/good loss”.

And what if Clemson wins out? Notre Dame is no different.

The home team has won the past four meetings in the series…. The Tigers also beat Boston College by 17.

There are four other matchups of teams in the CFP rankings today and Saturday and NFL Sunday brings us a prime-time showdown between the unbeaten New England Patriots and Denver Broncos. “We still have to play the game against Stanford”. This game features perhaps the game’s top linebacker against the most versatile offensive threat. Is “a win a win” or do style points matter?

Do you really want the answer? The Irish have allowed that much just twice this season….

“I think if you look at the teams across the board, we’ve played, from the start in September all the way through November, a very good schedule”, Kelly said.

Next, Oklahoma is in if they are the Big 12 Champion by winning against Oklahoma State. If one of these teams can notch a definitely win, they can possibly vault themselves into the Top Four conversation. But, this game only has playoff relevance if Michigan State loses to Penn State. With the Sooners being rated #3, they are in with a win. Oklahoma State only suffered their first loss of the season this past weekend and would love nothing more than to ruin Oklhoma’s season. (On a side note, I wonder why Oklahoma is getting so much more respect than Oklahoma State too but this article is about Notre Dame).