Good news, everyone! ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) says you all have a chance at making the 2016 College Football Playoff!
Well, sort of.
Even though there there was some controversy with the first College Football Playoff in 2014, both editions of college football's final four have yielded pretty straight-forward results; at best, there were six teams that were even close to qualified to take one of the top spots.
However, ESPN's FPI is pretty much predicted an apocalyptic scenario for 2016: the chance of a two-loss team getting into the Playoffs.
From ESPN:
It's easy to look back at the first two years of the playoff and expect the same results going forward, but the past two years were the exception rather than the norm.
In 16 years under the BCS format, there were only three years (1998, 2008 and 2013) in which four of the current power conferences featured champions with zero or one loss entering bowls, and there was never a year like 2014 when all five of those conferences had champions with fewer than two losses.
Where FPI starts to come into that is with this: teams are playing more difficult schedules than every, as teams want to position themselves as, not just a team with few losses, but a team with few losses that actually beat competitors that matter.
RELATED: New CFP odds show chaos is brewing: Multiple contenders from the same conference
Why would this be an apocalyptic scenario? Think back to the 2014 season, where both one-loss Baylor and TCU got left out in favor of Ohio State. That was just three teams to pick from; imagine how many teams could have two losses and make a claim for a Playoff spot. Obviously there would be few one-loss teams in this scenario, but in 2015, there were seven Power 5 teams with two losses. There was also a one-loss Houston squad that proved its worth by defeating Florida State in the Peach Bowl.
What happens when there is a one-loss team that didn't make their conference title game? Where do they stand in the race with a two-loss conference champion? Where would a two-loss team that lost their conference championship game stand? For example, how much would we penalize an 11-2 Tennessee team if both of their losses were close contests with an undefeated and No. 1 Alabama?
Trying to pull four candidates when there could be as many as 10 making reasonable claims for a spot? Yeah, that will get messy, and it will only spur on the argument that the Playoff should be expanded to eight teams.
While chaos is fun, hopefully this doesn't happen next season; it is a lot more satisfying to pick a champion that you know has earned their spot. No one wants to go back to the "yeah, they were named champion, but...' days of the polls and the BCS.
