Yeah it’s only May but I’ve thinking about the College Football Playoff again. I wanted to expand on the idea of the 4 core playoff teams (Bama, Clemson, Ohio St, Oklahoma) & see if there were any events that signal which non-core team(s) might make the playoff each year...

What I’ve come up is this group of 6 teams: Bama, Clemson, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Oregon & Notre Dame.

In every playoff so far, at least three of those teams has made it (in 2018, all four were from that group).

The “outside” team has always been someone who beat one of those 6.

Beyond that, the outsider’s “golden ticket” win has almost always been close (fewer than 7 points). The only exception is Washington’s 70-21 pasting of Oregon in 2016.

Oddly, Oklahoma has been immune to this phenomenon thus far. Each time they’ve made the playoffs, they’ve done so with a single close loss on their record. If that team could’ve finished with 0 or 1 loss, they probably would have been in.

It will interesting to see if this trend continues. Does the playoff really revolve around just these six teams? History suggests that these power centers gradually shift but even if, say, USC re-emerges in the Pac-12, it won’t necessarily negate this trend.

Ok, back to coronavirus memes.

So many typos in this thread...