College Football Playoff Counterfactuals: Who would win after World War II?
By Zach Bigalke
Who would get into into a playoff in 1946?
Because conference affiliation was still so fluid in this period, it would have been much harder to tie a playoff solely to conference champions. The top two seeds, if the polls of the time are any indication, would almost certainly have been a pair of independent programs. Notre Dame and Army were seen as head and shoulders above the rest of the field.
There were certainly some leagues that were well established enough that automatically including their champions would make sense. SEC champion Georgia and PCC champion UCLA were both undefeated. So was Border champ Hardin-Simmons.
One-loss North Carolina won the Southern Conference. LSU and Tennessee both finished with only one loss behind the SEC-leading Bulldogs. Oregon State was in a similar boat behind the Bruins in the PCC.
But with only so many unbeaten and one-loss teams, a playoff still needed multi-defeat programs to fill out the field.
So which two-loss teams would get picked for a 16-team playoff?
Leagues meriting inclusion of their champions also include the Big Ten. At the time, the league was the Big Nine after Chicago departed and before Michigan State was invited. After emerging as a two-loss champion, Illinois would claim one of the 16 spots in the tournament. So too would Michigan, the runner-up that also had two losses in the regular season.
Another conference champion with a pair of losses was Rice. The Southwest Conference winners finished in a tie with three-loss Arkansas. But the Owls would probably get left out in favor of the co-champion Razorbacks. During the regular season, Arkansas beat Rice 7-0 in the de facto conference title game.
Several more two-loss teams would be needed in the mix. Who emerged as playoff participants all depends on how the teams are selected. A smaller committee like the current College Football Playoff selectors would be able to offer more nuanced justifications for their pics. Leaning on the polls would provide a more comprehensive pulse of the national situation.