Dear Andy: Will the Big Ten get more teams in the College Football Playoff than the SEC?

It’s Halloween, and you, the listeners of Andy & Ari On3, have questions. Let’s dive into the latest edition of Dear Andy to answer your college football questions.

From Tyler:
Coming into the season I thought the SEC would place four teams in the playoff and that the Big 10 would place three. Every projection I’ve seen this week has had the exact opposite. Can y’all discuss the nuances of why this is the case?

It’s still too early to tell how many teams each league will get into the College Football Playoff, but this particular set of projections can be explained. In the Big Ten, we’re pretty sure we know which teams can make the playoff, and it’s fairly easy to trace their paths. In the SEC, which is more muddled than it has been in decades, several upcoming matchups could dramatically shift the picture.

The Big Ten has five teams that could finish the regular season 10-2. Oh, you thought I was going to say four? The four you’re thinking of are Oregon, Penn State, Ohio State and Indiana. The fifth is Illinois, which got pounded by Oregon but which is 6-2 and has Minnesota, Michigan State, Rutgers and Northwestern remaining.

Everyone else has at least three losses. Ohio State will either hand Penn State its first loss on Saturday, or the Nittany Lions will put the Buckeyes in win-or-else mode while also setting up a potential Oregon-Penn State Big Ten title game. Indiana is 8-0 and likely will be favored in every game except Ohio State. Oregon, which plays Michigan, Maryland, Wisconsin and Washington, has a cleaner path to 12-0 than any other undefeated team except Miami.

It’s easy to imagine four of those teams in the bracket. The two teams that make the title game (Oregon, Indiana, Ohio State or Penn State), any one-loss team that doesn’t (Indiana or Penn State) and any two-loss team with a reasonably difficult schedule. But it’s the last part where it could get tricky. Simply going 10-2 in the Big Ten or the SEC might not be good enough. 

That’s why the SEC is so difficult to project. There are semi-plausible scenarios where six SEC teams finish 10-2, and six SEC teams aren’t getting into the bracket. (Especially if an 11-1 Clemson beats a 12-0 Miami in the ACC title game.) Either Alabama or LSU is guaranteed to take a third loss when those teams play Nov. 9. But there aren’t any other guaranteed elimination games as of yet. (Though there likely will be some — at least we hope.) 

Georgia and Tennessee, which both look capable of making the CFP, play on Nov. 16, but there is no guarantee either will be knocked out with a loss. Georgia could knock out Ole Miss when those teams meet in Oxford on Nov. 9, but the Rebels need to survive a potentially tricky trip to Arkansas first.

At the moment Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Texas and Texas A&M are theoretically alive. Missouri, with two blowout losses and no signature non-conference wins, might already be out. If we want to get really wacky, we could say that Florida (remaining schedule: Georgia, Texas, LSU, Ole Miss, Florida State; losses: Miami, Texas A&M, Tennessee) could run the table and get in at 9-3 because of its absurdly difficult schedule and a win streak that defies logic, but that is about as likely as me being hired to be the face of Gucci’s new spring line. 

More than likely, much of this will work itself out in November. We tend to assume chalk this time of year and then get our minds blown when 18- to 22-year-olds in the midst of a grinding season have a bad day against a different group of 18- to 22-year-olds who happen to have their best day on that particular Saturday. 

The fun part will be watching the chaos as these teams whittle themselves down. Maybe four Big Ten teams get in and three SEC teams get in, but the beauty of this is we have no idea if that’s going to happen.

From Papa Irish:
What are your thoughts about Brennan Marion’s Go-Go offense and Jamey Chadwell’s spread option offense working in the SEC and Big 10? Gimmicks that would inevitably figured out, or are they the next wave that will become somewhat of the new norm in future years?

This question reminds me of when Urban Meyer was hired at Florida from Utah following the 2004 season. Could Meyer’s offense — a spread option hatched at Bowling Green using single-wing principles in order to overcome a talent deficit — succeed in the SEC? The answer, of course, was yes. Meyer had to tweak it in 2005 because he didn’t have the requisite personnel, but once he had his first full-cycle recruiting class in the fold, that offense helped the Gators to two national titles and it helped Tim Tebow win the 2007 Heisman Trophy.

The moral of the story is that any playbook works better when Percy Harvin is on the field. And the same would go for UNLV offensive coordinator Marion’s Go-Go offense and Liberty head coach Chadwell’s triple-option based spread. Both those offenses were developed to overcome talent disadvantages. Marion began developing the Go-Go as the OC at FCS school Howard, and the seed of it was this question: “How can we move the ball even if we can’t recruit the best offensive linemen?” Chadwell, who has gone from Division II North Greenville to FCS Charleston Southern to Coastal Carolina to Liberty, faced the same circumstances at his previous stops. He took the Liberty job because Liberty is the best resourced league in its conference, but all his previous jobs were at schools that weren’t. So he didn’t have the best players, and he had to find a schematic way around that.

In the Big Ten or SEC, those offenses — which aren’t the same but embrace similar principles — would not work if run with UNLV- or Liberty-quality players. But they would work quite well with Big Ten- and SEC-level players. 

Meyer’s offense, which also helped him win a national title at Ohio State, used single-wing concepts that looked like they came from the 1950s but had actually endured in the sport throughout the decades because they continue to work.

The same goes for the triple option, which probably stresses defenses even more because it requires so much discipline to properly defend. Someone must account for one of three potential ballcarriers on the option-based plays, and Marion and Chadwell each tag passing-game concepts on some of those plays as well. 

A few years ago, Chadwell and I discussed how much easier it has gotten to find quarterbacks willing to play in such a system. In the 1990s, Nebraska got Tommie Frazier out of Bradenton, Fla., because none of the Florida schools wanted Frazier as a QB. Meanwhile, QBs who wanted to play in the NFL wanted no part of the option. They didn’t want to get hit in the run game. Now, nearly every high school offense has quarterback run baked in, and nearly every quarterback expects to run and throw the ball.

Plus, nearly every high school quarterback runs read option plays, so they already understand the concept of a mesh with the back while the quarterback reads defenders and decides whether to hand off or keep. Find a QB who has played basketball and tell him to run a two-on-one fast break with the football and he’ll understand the pitch piece of the triple option. 

I suspect that we’ll see these offenses in a power conference soon, either because the originators have gotten jobs at schools there or because someone else borrowed details of those offenses (because they work really well) when building a scheme. It will come down, as it usually does, to how well the coaches can recruit to the level of their school’s league. Find a Percy Harvin, and pretty much every playbook works.

From Dan:
Oregon has long suffered from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stanford Disorder/Playing The Sun Devils). With the schedule, it seems Oregon shouldn’t fall into that trap this year. Is this team that locked in? Or are scar tissue teams another conference realignment victim?

This is one quirk of realignment I hadn’t considered. Teams also leave behind the teams that dealt them repeated crushing losses. Stanford is easy to explain; the Cardinal happened to ascend about the same time the Ducks did, so games against Stanford often had Pac-12 North title implications. But this also is the time of year when Ducks fans would pucker seeing Arizona State on the schedule (remember 2017 and 2019?). Now, they look out and see Michigan, Maryland, Wisconsin and old frenemy Washington.

In any other year, the Wolverines and Huskies appearing on this list would be cause for concern, but Oregon can drop two of the final four and still make the CFP and probably could lose one of the four and still make the Big Ten title game. (Unless Penn State and Indiana win out.) 

Maybe the Terrapins stun the Ducks and become that weird conference opponent that deals puzzling losses. Ohio State has the occasional visit to Purdue. For Florida, Starkville, Miss., was a house of horrors on occasion in the 1990s and early 2000s. But that takes two or three stunning losses in a relatively condensed period. So we won’t know for a few years who the Random Weirdo Opponents will be for teams in their new leagues.

A Random Ranking

OK, it’s not that random. I’m ranking Halloween candy. I’ve done this list previously, but my tastes have evolved.

1. Haribo Twin Snakes
2. Full-size Snickers
3. Fun-size Snickers
4. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
5. Special Dark miniatures
6. 100 Grand
7. Nerds Gummy Clusters
8. Twizzlers
9. Blow Pops
10. Nestle Crunch