Utah is in a good place with three weeks to go in the season.
Yes, the Utes don’t control their destiny for the Big 12 championship game — though there’s still a chance they get there with some outside help — but with a No. 13 College Football Playoff ranking, is there a chance the Utes could make their first-ever CFP appearance without getting to the Big 12 title?
There’s still a long ways to go until Dec. 7’s CFP selection day, but as we head into the home stretch of the college football regular season, it’s worth looking at if there’s even a possibility for the Utes to grab an at-large bid.
Respect
The College Football Playoff committee clearly respects 7-2 Utah’s résumé. The Utes’ two losses have come against the No. 6 team (Texas Tech) and the No. 12 team (BYU).
Utah was blown out, 34-10, by the Red Raiders, although were only down three points with 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The Utes’ loss in Provo was by just three points.
In the other seven games, the Utes have steamrolled their opponents, with an average margin of victory of 36 points. Utah has blown out two top-25 teams at the time of the game — No. 21 Arizona State (with no Sam Leavitt) 42-10 and No. 17 Cincinnati 45-14.
“... we looked at ... Utah, the convincing win against Arizona State and then against Cincinnati,” said College Football Playoff committee chair Mack Rhodes.
The win against the Bearcats, specifically, was a huge boost for the Utes in the eyes of the CFP committee.
“Candidly, the game at Utah, I think the committee felt like that was going to be a very, very competitive game, and it didn’t turn out that way. But Cincinnati is a really good team, and obviously we think highly by ranking them in our top 25,” Rhodes said.
Metrics
Utah also ranks highly in most metrics. ESPN’s Football Power Index loves the Utes — Utah is No. 9 in the country in that metric. ESPN describes FPI as “a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season.”
The Utes are one of just four teams (Texas Tech, Indiana, Oregon) to rank in the top 10 in scoring offense (39.6 points per game) and scoring defense (14.22 points per game). The dominant fashion of the Utes’ victories is doing them favors when it comes to how the CFP committee views them.
While the respect and No. 13 ranking is nice for the Utes, the big question is this: If Utah wins out, but does not make it to the Big 12 championship game, do the Utes have a shot at an at-large CFP bid?
The bottom line is that Utah would need to be ranked in the top 10 in the final CFP rankings to earn a bid to the 12-team playoff.
The highest-ranked Group of Five champion — currently No. 24 USF — will earn an automatic bid, and so will the ACC champion, which may not be ranked in the top 12 (the highest-ranked ACC team right now is No. 15 Miami).
That takes two spots, and then there’s three spots for the SEC champion, Big Ten champion and the Big 12 champion.
That leaves seven at-large spots.
Looking ahead
To potentially move into the top 10, Utah would of course need to win out (at Baylor, vs. Kansas State and at Kansas) and need the two-loss teams ahead of it — No. 9 Notre Dame, No. 10 Texas and No. 11 Oklahoma to lose.
The best chance of the Fighting Irish dropping a third game is this Saturday when they travel to play No. 22 Pittsburgh, though Notre Dame is still a 12.5-point favorite.
The Longhorns have a tough end to their schedule — at No. 5 Georgia, vs. Arkansas and vs. No. 3 Texas A&M. A third loss could be likely, but if the Longhorns pull off an upset over Georgia or Texas A&M, the CFP committee could very well rank three-loss Texas over two-loss Utah.
Oklahoma also has a tough schedule, playing at No. 4 Alabama and vs. Missouri.
A factor hurting Utah is the lack of a chance for another statement win, as the Utes close out the season without playing another team close to the CFP rankings.
If enough teams in front of Utah lose, would a path to No. 10 or above in the final rankings even be possible?
What ifs
Texas Tech is the heavy favorite to win the Big 12 championship — the Red Raiders close with UCF and West Virginia, which both have losing records. If Texas Tech wins out but loses in the Big 12 title game, they’d nearly be guaranteed a CFP spot still.
If BYU makes it unscathed through the regular season and loses to the Red Raiders again in the Big 12 championship to finish 10-2 — with both Cougar losses to one of the best teams in the nation — there wouldn’t be much of an argument to put Utah ahead of the Cougars with the two teams sharing the same record, especially since BYU has the head-to-head win over Utah.
There’s no guarantee 10-2 BYU, with two losses to Texas Tech, gets in the CFP either. The Big 12 could very well be a one-bid league.
But what if the Cougars drop another regular-season game, still make it to the conference championship game and get blown out again by Texas Tech? Does the committee rank a three-loss BYU team over a two-loss Utah team (assuming Cincinnati drops a game)? They likely do, but there’s a bit more conversation in that scenario.
“For the committee, we look at it as a positive if you’re playing in the championship game. It’s another datapoint. It’s certainly recognized when we think about record strength. Obviously you win it, that’s a plus. If you lose it, theoretically it’s not supposed to hurt you,” Rhodes said.
“Could it hurt you? If it was a game where it wasn’t competitive and you completely got blown away, then that would be a conversation, candidly, in the room amongst the committee.”
Right now, Utah is focusing on the only thing it can control — winning.
“Our thinking is we’re really focused on Baylor right now and we just know that we don’t have any margin for error. We understand that,” Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. “And so I think it was a nice show of respect for our program from the committee to rank us where we were ranked. But again, we got to take things one week at a time and that’s exactly what we’re doing this week.”
