Stanford
The Cardinal are another team that would pay a lot of money for a mulligan for the season. Their opening 16-6 loss at Northwestern is killing their chances to chase a national title in the College Football Playoff. Sure, they lost a second game at home to Oregon by two points, but I don’t think that’d be enough to disqualify them from the final four on its own.
I’m sure the Cardinal thought that scheduling Northwestern to open the season was a great idea. After all, the Wildcats are not a perennial power and a game pitting two fine academic institutions against one another has quite a few attractive qualities. Unfortunately, Stanford might have outsmarted itself by scheduling Northwestern. No one thought that clunker on the opening weekend would be so costly for Stanford’s team.
Stanford is one of those programs that probably wouldn’t win an eight-team playoff, but would be a mortal lock to win at least one game. They’d be like that NCAA basketball team that pops up in a region and you know is going to be a “tough out.” The Cardinal aren’t going to beat themselves and would only bow out of the Playoff if a more talented opponent outplayed them.
The Cardinal still have a route to the Playoff but I think it’s a remote chance at best. They’d need to win the Pac-12 Championship game against Southern Cal and hope for a few losses by teams ranked ahead of them. It’d take a really crazy Championship Week for them to gain enough ground to reach the top four.
It’s a good thing the Stanford men will have great degrees to propel them forward in life, because they won’t have the experience of this year’s College Football Playoff.