College Football Playoff: 5 teams that could make it for the first time in 2020

Every year since inception, at least one team has made the College Football Playoff for the first time. Here are five candidates to do that in 2020.

Since the 2014 NCAA season, the national champion has been decided by the College Football Playoff. The four-team tournament has become the end-all, be-all of college football. Either you’re in or you’re out. Sure, there’s the New Year’s Six, but playing in a national semifinal game around New Year’s Eve is everything in the college football landscape.

Given that we’ve only had six playoffs under our belts, new teams who have never been there before get their first shot at this big dance. Every season, as least one team has made the field for the first time in school history. Last year saw the LSU Tigers become the first No. 1 seed to win the tournament. To date, every seed but the No. 3 seed has hoisted the playoff trophy in the end.

But as one Power 5 team after another makes it into the playoff for the first time, the field of contending teams to get in for the first time shrinks. Will 2020 be the first year of the playoff where all four teams are returning for at least the second time? Will it be lucky year No. 7 for a new team getting in? What blue-blood will have to fade for someone new to get in?

Here are five teams with the best shot of making the College Football Playoff for the first time.

Even if Kyle Whittingham’s program did lose the Hallandale Trio to the 2020 NFL Draft, the Utah Utes are in a great position to win the Pac-12 South again. Though their non-conference schedule is a joke (BYU, Montana State, at Wyoming), Utah has a tremendous shot of going undefeated heading into the Pac-12 title bout in Santa Clara. They get one break after another in scheduling.

With presumably a 3-0 record heading into conference play, the Utes could achieve bowl eligibility before mid-October. At Cal could be challenging, but thankfully, the Utes won’t have to play USC in Los Angeles this year. Utah has never beaten the Trojans at L.A. Memorial Coliseum. USC will be feisty, but playing in altitude at Rice-Eccles in early October is no day at the beach for the Trojans.

If they take care of the Washington schools in back-to-back weeks, with U Dub at home and Wazzu in Pullman, Utah could be 7-0 heading into its bye week. After that, the Utes only have one difficult game left on the schedule: At Arizona State on Nov. 21. Even if they lose on the road in Tempe, Utah could get back to the conference title bout at 11-1 (8-1) with a playoff bid on the line.

Because Utah does not play a Power 5 team in the non-conference and wouldn’t Pac-12 North teams like Oregon or Stanford until the conference championship, they could realistically get the No. 4 seed as a one-loss Pac-12 champion. They may not have the players they did last year, but the Utes’ rise to a playoff contender a year ago will not be forgotten heading into next season.