Kirk Herbstreit explains how LSU can make the College Football Playoff

LSU vaulted up to No. 7 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings but Kirk Herbstreit offered insight into how the Tigers can make the CFP.

There was a conspiracy theory after the first College Football Playoff rankings were revealed a week ago that the selection committee boosted the LSU Tigers up to No. 10 after they were No. 15 in that week’s AP Top 25 in order to help improve the resumé of Alabama. But instead, the committee ended up playing itself.

Brian Kelly’s family welcomed Bama to Death Valley and used a gutsy two-point conversion to give the Tigers a one-point win. And that was enough to vault LSU to No. 7 in the latest CFP rankings. Subsequently, people immediately began asking if the Tigers could possibly make it up into the Top 4 if they won out and beat Georgia in the SEC Championship Game.

While Rece Davis and Greg McElroy had a hard time seeing the Tigers jumping Tennessee to get into the Top 4 of the Playoff rankings given that the Vols blew them out earlier this season, Kirk Herbstreit offered the logic behind how LSU could make that leap and what could propel the team into the CFP.

“Based on history, going back to 2014, it’s building momentum into December,” Herbstreit said. “We can look at the strength of schedule, we can look at all of these different metrics — Greg, to me at the end of the day, the biggest thing that I’ve seen to give teams a push across the finish line, especially when there’s a cluster, it’s who do you not want to be on the field with. Who do you not want to play?”

Kirk Herbstreit explains how LSU can make the College Football Playoff

Herbstreit continued and even addressed Davis’ consideration of Tennessee having the head-to-head matchup in its favor.

“What Rece [Davis] is saying is fair,” Herbstreit said. “That would give Tennessee a trump card in that head-to-head battle. But style points are going to matter whether we like that or not.”

While the never-real transitive property of college football would side with Davis, Herbstreit is right in the fact that LSU winning against Alabama and then, in this scenario, going on to beat Georgia in the SEC Championship Game would be enough for the committee to side with them based on the football they’ve played down the stretch, looking like one of the four best teams by the time the final rankings are comprised.

Of course, there’s still a lot of football to be played. Even though LSU will be favored, beating Arkansas and Texas A&M on the road to finish their SEC schedule is not a foregone conclusion. And even more so, neither is beating Georgia for the SEC title.

But if it were to happen, Herbstreit’s logic is what we’ve seen historically for the committee, and that could be enough to put LSU in the Playoff.

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