College Football Playoff chaos theory: Anarchy that will shake-up the status quo
By John Buhler
So you’re telling me there’s a chance?!
Cincinnati Bearcats: 8-1 (5-0)
You know what? We’re gonna try something here. No, there is maybe a one in a million chance the Cincinnati Bearcats can get in this year, but if there’s a one-loss conference champion that is ever going to make it out of the Group of 5, it would be Luke Fickell‘s 2019 Cincinnati team. Again, we’re talking fractions of a percent here, but we did say we’re getting weird. And so it is!
There are three things that give Cincinnati a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in: The American is really good this year, the ACC is deplorably bad and the Bearcats’ only loss was to Ohio State, albeit an embarrassing shutout. The American is so much better than the ACC this year and might even have a case against the Pac-12 or Big 12 if we let it get to the Group of 5’s head today.
The American has four teams with only one loss this year: Cincinnati, the Memphis Tigers, the Navy Midshipmen and the SMU Mustangs. What gives the Bearcats the edge here is that Memphis, Navy and SMU have all lost AAC games thus far. Cincinnati will probably have a top-25 win over Memphis and will face either Memphis, Navy or SMU in the conference championship.
As with Oregon potentially, Cincinnati would have gone undefeated in conference play and won its conference championship. The Bearcats need Ohio State to win the Big 12, Clemson to lose a game and two-loss champions from the Big 12, Pac-12 and the SEC to have any dream of getting in. Would they edge out any one-loss non-champions from the Power 5? No, but let’s go, chaos!
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