College Football Playoff: Building the perfect chaos scenario

3. 3-loss Stanford wins the Pac-12, misses Playoff

That’s right, unranked Stanford is still mathematically alive in the Pac-12 race and they have Bryce Love. Stanford’s path to a conference championship is challenging, but definitely doable. They’ll have to start the process by beating Washington in Week 11 then defeating Cal in Week 12. If they win both of those games and Washington beats Washington State in the Apple Cup the Cardinal will advance to the title game via the tiebreaker over the Huskies.

As a part of that process they would lose their regular season finale against Notre Dame, boosting the resume of the Irish at their own expense. USC remains the favorite in the Pac-12 South. They already sit at two losses, and they’ll pick up their third loss against Stanford in the Pac-12 Championship Game.

That would make three-loss Stanford the Pac-12 Champions. Their best win would have been over Washington, but that’s not nearly enough to overcome three losses. Instead that Pac-12 isn’t even in the conversation. Washington would have two losses, USC would have three and neither would have a conference championship to their name.