Ivan Maisel predicts College Football Playoff field, picks surprise team in final spot

The oddsmakers in Las Vegas have little to no hope for teams not named Alabama, Ohio State, or Georgia to win the national championship in 2022. However, the College Football Playoff has four spots, not three. So there will be another team in it against the three odds on favorite with a chance to win a national championship. And on a recent episode of 3 Questions, college football expert Ivan Maisel predicts the College Football Playoff field, with a surprise team in the final spot.

“Well, I’m gonna go way out on that limb. Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia seem to be a step ahead, if not two or three, ahead of everybody else,” said Maisel. “I think the fourth team; there’s a lot of room to guess, and a team I like that nobody is talking about for that spot is Utah.

“They’ve got a lot of people coming back. They’re the defending league (Pac-12) champions. And I think on that topic of unfinished business, they feel like they let one go at the Rose Bowl last year, and they probably feel like nobody’s talking about them. So their schedule’s manageable; tough late-season game at Oregon, but I like the Utes.”

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Utah started off the year slow but came on strong on the back end. To wrap up the regular season, the Utes rallied off four straight wins, including dismantling the Oregon ducks 38-7 In their second to last game of this season. In the Pac-12 championship game, Utah faced off against Oregon for the second time in two weeks and destroyed them all the same.

Where Utah let one get away was in the Rose Bowl against the Buckeyes. The Utes battled the Buckeyes fiercely throughout the contest, even tying the game up at 45 with less than two minutes to go. Sadly, that was more than enough time for Heisman Trophy candidate CJ Stroud to lead Ohio State down the field before the game-winning field goal.

With a significant amount of their roster returning from last year, Utah will have the experience and talent capable of repeating as Pac-12 champions. And if they can start this season off better than they did in 2021, they will have a legitimate case for being one of the four teams in the College Football Playoff.