What must Group of Five teams do to reach College Football Playoff?

3. Knock off at least two ranked Power Five opponents

In 2015, Houston went to the Peach Bowl and took down Florida State for the American Athletic Conference’s first New Year’s Six win of the College Football Playoff era. (UCF won the 2014 Fiesta Bowl in the last year of the BCS era, when the AAC still possessed a former automatic-qualifying berth as the successor of the Big East.)

Coming out of that performance, the defending American champions had the chance to make even more noise in 2016. Houston opened the year with a takedown of an Oklahoma team that went on to win the Big 12 title. They later knocked off a Louisville team in a game where they effectively contained that year’s Heisman winning-quarterback, Lamar Jackson.

Unfortunately, Houston failed to test the theory about the significance of beating multiple ranked Power Five opponents by falling short on Step 1 of the process. The Cougars suffered multiple conference defeats and failed to even earn a chance to defend their crown.

But putting together a resume with multiple Power Five wins against quality opponents is critical for any College Football Playoff bid by a Group of Five school. Two is a minimum, and if a team could take down three different Power Five opponents that contend for their respective conference crowns it would make an even bigger difference. That strength of schedule would be too much to ignore by the selection committee.