SMQ: What would a 12-team College Football Playoff look like in 2021?

Sorting out the six College Football Playoff wild cards

That leaves six other spaces to fill out the 12-team bracket. Of the four remaining conference winners, only one-loss Louisiana and UTSA have any case that might be considered by the College Football Playoff selection committee. Utah State’s upset of San Diego State eliminated the Mountain West from the picture, while the MAC championship game featured two challengers with nine losses between them.

Any Power Five or independent team with more than two losses, and any Group of Five team with more than one loss, effectively eliminated themselves from the race. That winnows it down to a list of 10 contenders to fill the final six wild-card spots in a 12-team College Football Playoff.

That includes the Roadrunners and Ragin’ Cajuns, who join a larger pool of wild card hopefuls. Here is that list of teams sorted by record:

• Georgia (12-1 SEC runner-up)
• Louisiana (12-1 Sun Belt champion)
• UTSA (12-1 C-USA champion)
• Notre Dame (11-1 independent)
• Oklahoma State (11-2 Big 12 runner-up)
• Ohio State (10-2 Big Ten East runner-up)
• Ole Miss (10-2 SEC West runner-up)
• BYU (10-2 independent)
• Michigan State (10-2 Big Ten East third place)
• Oklahoma (10-2 Big 12 third place)

Okay, now that we’ve acknowledged that UTSA and Louisiana would get mentioned behind closed doors, let’s face reality and accept that neither would actually land one of those six spots. Both teams would be left on the outside, leaving Cincinnati as the only Group of Five team in the hunt for the mythical national championship.

The two other one-loss teams in this pool of candidates, Georgia and Notre Dame, would receive the last two opportunities to host an opening-round matchup. Though the Bulldogs lost in the SEC championship by 17 points against Alabama, their body of work throughout the season is enough to land a playoff game between the hedges. For Notre Dame, the fact that their only loss came against No. 3 Cincinnati wouldn’t be enough to relegate them to a road game.

For the last four spots, the committee would basically grapple with a body of work and recency biases. Oklahoma State’s loss in the Big 12 championship game was a rough final data point to present to the committee — but the Cowboys were also the only team in this pool playing on championship weekend, and if the committee keeps out the Pokes they’re also probably keeping out Oklahoma.

Here’s guessing that the committee opts to eliminate the two teams that finished third in their respective divisions. That leaves Oklahoma State, Ohio State, Ole Miss, and BYU to travel for road games in the opening round.