Alabama playoff-bound? Now or never for Penn State? Week 10 college football overreactions

Only three full weeks of regular-season play remain in college football’s top division. But while a lot of matters have sorted themselves out, there are still quite a few questions yet to be answered – and still a lot of potential for hyperbole.

Once again if you’re new to this feature, these are overreactions. The headlines are not our opinions, but they express thoughts that have been voiced by professional and amateur commentators alike over the air or on social media. Our aim here is to provide a measure of perspective to said reactions, some of which have some element of truth and some of which are over the top.

In the Week 10 edition of overreactions, we’ll flit around the major conferences, then finish with a peek at the unbeaten group-of-five school nobody is talking about.

Alabama is making the playoff after all

A lot of people were ready to bury the Crimson Tide way back in Week 2 after their home loss to Texas. With Saturday’s win against LSU, they’ve now all but secured a return trip to the SEC championship game

But just as it was premature to declare Alabama’s season over in September, it’s also too early to give the Tide their playoff ticket. Do they have a path? Yes, but they also need a few other things to break their way to reach the top four of the final rankings.

First and foremost, obviously they need to win the conference by beating, almost certainly, Georgia. It would also help if the Bulldogs were still undefeated when they got to Atlanta. An Alabama victory there would remove one possible unscathed power conference winner from the mix, but there could still be as many as three others. Tide fans probably need to hope that number is reduced by at least one, because even at 12-1 Alabama’s résumé would then have to be compared to other one-loss teams for that precious fourth spot. Among those who could be in that equation is Texas, which would hold that afore-mentioned head-to-head result over the Tide.

Having said all that, an Alabama team rounding into form in November is not the ideal opponent for anyone with title aspirations. In short, don’t count them in, but definitely don’t count them out.

It’s now or never, Penn State

Well, never might be a little too broad. The dynamics of the Big Ten will change next year, as does the entire championship structure of the sport with playoff expansion on the horizon. As far as this season is concerned, however, the Nittany Lions’ upcoming home date with Michigan is indeed their last shot.

The dominant narrative after the loss at Ohio State a month ago was that they were still a step below the league’s two elite programs. This is their last chance to alter that story arc in the current era. A win wouldn’t guarantee them a spot in the Big Ten finale, particularly if tiebreakers come into play, but it would give them a positive datapoint that others in the one-loss pool would have a hard time matching.

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The Big 12 is still wide open

It might still look like it, with seven teams still within a game of each other in the loss column at the top of the standings. A closer look, however, shows Texas and Oklahoma State now a game clear of the field, and those two have a fairly smooth path to the finish line.

The Cowboys’ last three games are all against conference newcomers who haven’t fared well since making the jump – at Central Florida, at Houston, then home against Brigham Young. The Longhorns have a slightly tougher finishing stretch, with a potentially tricky trip to Iowa State up after next week’s visit to TCU. But they’ll be favored in both of those as well as the home finale against Texas Tech. There are no certainties in this sport of course – nobody expected the Cowboys to be in this position a month ago – but it’s going to be tough now for the rest of the conference to crack the top two.

The ACC won’t make the playoff

It won’t if its champion is not perfect after the regular season concludes, and there’s only one candidate remaining that can still do that. Florida State will absolutely be in the top four if it runs the table, but any stumble by the Seminoles the rest of the way would almost certainly be disqualifying given the mediocrity of the rest of the league.

Louisville is the only other conference member that would even have an argument by getting to 12-1, a feat which would necessarily include a victory against the Seminoles in the title game. But the Cardinals’ setback at 2-7 Pittsburgh would not compare well with, say, a 12-1 Oregon or other one-loss teams under consideration. It's conceivable a slew of contenders from the other major conferences could get tagged twice in the final three weeks. But that would require a level of chaos that frankly hasn’t materialized this season and is unlikely to do so now.

Liberty should go to a New Year's Six bowl

Air Force’s stunning loss to Army leaves just two remaining undefeated teams from group-of-five conferences. One of those is James Madison, which as has been repeated on numerous occasions is transitioning and not yet eligible for the Sun Belt championship and ergo cannot be considered for a New Year’s Six bowl slot. That leaves Liberty, which improved to 9-0 over the weekend and secured the right to host the Conference USA title game in its first year in the league.

Even if the Flames win out, however, they’re not likely to be the highest-rated Group of Five champ by the CFP committee. Their schedule strength wouldn’t measure up to that of the American or Mountain West champ. Liberty faced no one from the power leagues. They can claim a transitive ACC win by virtue of beating Bowling Green, which somehow took down Georgia Tech a few weeks later, but nothing else on the Flames’ résumé would move the needle.