Which one-loss teams are still in the hunt for a College Football Playoff spot? Sunday Morning Quarterback tackles the question after Week 2 action.
As many as six different teams with at least one loss could still be ranked in the AP Top 25 after a wild second full weekend of college football. In the days of the College Football Playoff, a single loss ostensibly does not take a team out of the running for the national title.
But is that really the case? Now that the field has expanded to four teams instead of the top-two pairing that marked the Bowl Coalition, Bowl Alliance, and BCS eras, the expanded field allows for one-loss teams to make it into the playoff picture.
The idea that a team has longer to overcome an early loss than a late loss is essentially a truism at this point. A lot more is forgiven if a team can actually get back to winning ways and keep winning after that first defeat.
But is the dictum that an early loss is less costly than a late one true?
Last week, I talked about how Florida State’s loss to Alabama was largely meaningless. They lost Deondre Francois for the season, which was definitely impactful. But the Seminoles remained highly ranked despite falling big on neutral turf to the SEC favorite and No. 1 team in the country. But how often do teams manage to rebuild their resume and actually rebound into a top-four spot after such a loss?
Over the past 25 years since the formation of the Bowl Coalition in 1992, there have only been five instances where a team has come back from taking a loss in their first two games of the season and come back to finish in the top four of the relevant ranking of the period.
All of those comebacks occurred in the BCS or College Football Playoff era. A few teams did manage to finish in the top six during the Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance periods from 1992 through 1997, but none made it into a top-four spot. Neither the Big Ten nor the Pac-10 had a team pull off the feat either during that period, rendering those six years moot for the point of this evaluation. Anything earlier than 1992 is essentially a different era of college football altogether.
So we have 19 seasons of data to look at, meaning that a team has recovered from an early defeat in just over a quarter of the seasons played. Another few have fallen short in their quests to recover from a loss to finish fifth.
So which 1-loss team could become the sixth team in two decades?
To answer the question of which one-loss teams still have a shot at the College Football Playoff, let’s look at the five teams that managed to succeed in breaking into what would have been a playoff berth under past iterations of the BCS formula. Had a plus-one model come into existence earlier, it likely would have incorporated some combination of human and computer evaluation as the BCS packaged it for public consumption.
So we will use these three case studies to answer the main question at the heart of today’s Saturday Morning Quarterback. Continue on to read more about each of the five teams that pulled off a top-four finish prior to the bowls. and how each of the possible contenders relate to these past success stories as they try to impress the current selection committee.
1998 marked the first year of the BCS, and a number of highly-ranked teams fell early in the season. Defending AP national champion Michigan fell twice in the first two weeks, as did Pac-10 powerhouse Arizona State. Both teams dropped out of the polls after those defeats, but others still hovered around with one loss.
On the opening weekend, No. 11 West Virginia fell against No. 1 Ohio State in Morgantown, while No. 10 took down No. 17 Syracuse in a visit to the Carrier Dome. Then there was No. 14 Texas A&M’s loss to No. 2 Florida State, as the Aggies fell 23-14 in the Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands outside New York.
A week after taking down Texas A&M, though, preseason AP No. 2 Florida State fell 24-7 in an ACC upset against NC State. The win brought the home fans flooding onto the field in Raleigh, where the goal posts came down. Two years before he won the Heisman Trophy, Chris Weinke went just 6-of-19 as the FSU quarterback and threw three interceptions.
From there, the Seminoles reeled off 10 straight victories to win the ACC title and move all the way up to No. 2 in the BCS standings. The inaugural year of the BCS was also the only time a team ever managed to return to a top-two position after losing in the first fortnight of the season.
In 2000, the Miami Hurricanes entered the season as a top-five team in the polls. Butch Davis and his staff had high hopes of bringing another national title to Coral Gables. The Hurricanes put themselves in an early deficit in the BCS race when they lost 34-29 in Seattle to then-No. 15 Washington.
Miami quarterback Ken Dorsey would go on to finish in the Heisman voting each of the next two seasons, but at the turn of the century he was still a raw passer. Against the Huskies on the other side of the country from home, Dorsey finished just 15-of-34 for 216 yards passing. He tossed a touchdown, and avoided throwing an interception, but it wasn’t enough to pull Miami through.
The Hurricanes nevertheless came close to making the BCS despite their defeat. Miami would not lose for the rest of the regular season, finishing 10-1 as Big East champions. By the time the first BCS standings were released in late October, the Hurricanes had climbed all the way up to fourth. They would have undoubtedly reached a four-team playoff had it existed.
Instead, though, Miami was spurned by the BCS despite defeating Florida State when they were No. 1 and Virginia Tech when they were No. 2 in the standings. With Oklahoma the only undefeated major-conference champion, style points ruled the day. As a result, the Seminoles were given the nod to face the Sooners instead of a Hurricanes team that had knocked off FSU.
The eighth season of the BCS yielded a big game early in the season, as two of the top five teams in the AP Top 25 met in Week 2. Ranked No. 4, the Buckeyes went to Austin to face No. 2 Texas. Both teams had high hopes of a national championship, and both teams were still in the hunt after the 25-22 Texas victory at home.
Texas took a 10-0 lead in the first quarter, but Ohio State turned things around before halftime. Scoring 16 unanswered points in the second quarter, the Buckeyes were up 16-13 at the intermission after a late David Pino field goal on the penultimate play of the second quarter.
After going up 22-16 lead in the final five minutes, it appeared that Jim Tressel’s team had done enough to take down the Longhorns. But Vince Young hit Limas Sweed for the go-ahead score with 2:37 left to play. A safety gave Texas the final two points, and Ohio State fell five spots to No. 9 after the defeat.
The Buckeyes went on to lose another game to Penn State at the beginning of October, but still went on to win a share of the Big Ten title. In the BCS standings, Ohio State opened at No. 15 on October 17 but managed to climb all the way to fourth in the final December standings. In a four-team system like the College Football Playoff, the Buckeyes would have been facing USC in a Rose Bowl semifinal instead of the classic that emerged between the Longhorns and Trojans.
In one of the craziest seasons in college football history, Virginia Tech opened 2007 at No. 9 in the AP Top 25. After knocking off East Carolina 17-7 in the home opener in Blacksburg, the Hokies headed to Louisiana to face No. 2 LSU.
Nothing worked out right for Virginia Tech, as the suffered the most comprehensive loss among teams that managed to come back from an early defeat. Starting quarterback Tyrod Taylor went just 7-of-18 passing for 62 yards, and rushed nine times for 44 yards and the only Hokies touchdown of the game. Frank Beamer’s team had just 149 total yards of offense.
Meanwhile Bud Foster’s defense could do nothing to stop the Tigers on their home turf. LSU racked up just under 600 total yards of offense. Les Miles’ team was equally effective running and throwing the football, as Matt Flynn threw for 217 yards and Keiland Williams led a deep backfield with 127 rushing yards.
Virginia Tech lost once again, falling at home in late October to a Boston College team sporting a No. 2 ranking. The Eagles went on to fall the next week, but against the Hokies they prevailed on the road 14-10. Beamer’s crew got the last laugh, though, as they took down Boston College 30-16 in the ACC championship game to finish the regular season as conference champion. They were also the first team out of the BCS title game, No. 3 among a field of two-loss champs.
Ohio State is the most recent team to suffer an early loss through the first two weeks of the season and still make it into the top four. Luckily for Urban Meyer and the Buckeyes, they did so in the first season after the BCS had ceded way to the College Football Playoff. Opening the season at No. 5, the Buckeyes actually dropped three spots despite winning their opener against Navy.
The second game of the season pitted the No. 8 Buckeyes against Virginia Tech in Columbus. Frank Beamer’s penultimate season on the Hokies sidelines began with a statement 35-21 upset of Ohio State that dropped Urban Meyer’s team to No. 22 in the AP Top 25. The Hokies climbed to No. 17 after the win, then promptly lost to East Carolina and Georgia Tech in quick succession to plummet right back out of the rankings.
Ohio State, on the other hand, recovered from the Hokies loss to go undefeated the rest of the way. Forced to juggle quarterbacks due to injures, the underdog Buckeyes shut out No. 11 Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten championship game to move to No. 4 in the final College Football Playoff rankings of the regular season.
As a result, Ohio State earned the right to face No. 1 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. For the first time, the bowl would serve as a semifinal site with a trip to the championship game at stake. Once again an underdog against the Crimson Tide, Meyer bested Nick Saban as the Buckeyes won 42-35 in New Orleans. They won a third straight as an underdog, toppling No. 2 Oregon 42-20 in Arlington, Texas to secure the national title.
Great, but what does this all mean?
There are a few takeaways that these past five games can offer as we try to figure out which remaining one-loss contenders could make the College Football Playoff. It seems as though there are a few key ingredients that translate across time.
A close loss is better than a blowout. A loss to a ranked team is better than losing to an unranked team. The one thing that doesn’t seem to be a major issue, though, is where a team actually ends up in the polls. That was especially true of the 2014 Buckeyes and 2007 Hokies, who both fell way down the AP Top 25 but still managed to reach the final four. In the case of Ohio State, they managed to win the entire College Football Playoff thanks to the increased access.
Teams, though, must hold up their ends of the bargain. A few of these teams went on to lose another game over the course of their seasons, but they also won their respective conference championships. Despite what last year’s Ohio State team made it seem, league titles still do matter for Power Five teams trying to get into the College Football Playoff bracket.
So which one-loss teams could be the next to make the top four?
There are really only six teams that have a somewhat realistic shot. In order, here they are with their losses:
- Auburn (1-1) — lost 14-6 at No. 3 Clemson
- Ohio State (1-1) — lost 31-16 vs. No. 5 Oklahoma
- Florida State (0-1) — lost 24-7 vs. No. 1 Alabama (in Atlanta)
- West Virginia (1-1) — lost 31-24 vs. No. 21 Virginia Tech (in Atlanta)
- Florida (0-1) — lost 33-17 vs. No. 11 Michigan (in Arlington, TX)
- Stanford (1-1) — lost 42-24 at No. 6 USC
Two of those teams, as you see, are 0-1 schools. Both, naturally, are Florida schools whose games were canceled this weekend. The College Football Playoff selection committee and voters in the respective polls will probably look at the Seminoles and Gators as 1-1 teams for the sake of argument.
Auburn, interestingly, might have the best loss of the bunch. They are the only team to fall on the road to a top-four school. Only one other team managed to hang within a single score of the opponent that took them down.
Stanford might be in the worst position of the teams. Though they lost on the road to a high-ranked team and held the game close for most of the contest, the simple fact that the loss came in conference play could ultimately doom them. The Cardinal cannot afford to lose another game in Pac-12 play, as they try to take back the division crown from Washington and return to Santa Clara.
Florida State is in the toughest spot, after losing starting quarterback Deondre Francois to an injury against Alabama. The Seminoles were forced to sit Week 2 action as games were canceled across the state. They will also have another bye next week after the rivalry game against Miami was pushed back into October. They are left in limbo, unable to redeem themselves after the loss to the Crimson Tide and unsure of what they will actually look like moving forward.
Next: College Football: Top 50 breakout candidates for 2017
Honestly, though, if any team is going to pull off the feat this year, it is likely going to be the team that has done it before from this bunch. Ohio State is best positioned to rebound, especially if they take down highly-ranked Penn State and Michigan along the way. If Oklahoma wins the Big 12 and a 12-1 Ohio State team takes the Big Ten crown, they would almost certainly both be in the College Football Playoff. Of course, that requires remembering how to actually play offense.