Which surprising undefeated team has the best chance of crashing the CFP?
By Austen Bundy
College football Week 6 featured one of the greatest slates of upsets in recent memory. Seven AP top-25 programs fell and four of the top-11 fell to unranked opponents.
After the chaos settled, there remain few undefeated teams across FBS conferences. Some of them more surprising than most.
Of course, Texas, Ohio State, Penn State, Oregon and Miami (despite looking dead in the water in Berkeley, Calif. late Saturday night) are top-10 programs that still have yet to be felled. But others like Pittsburgh (5-0), Indiana (6-0), BYU (5-0) and Iowa State (5-0) have pundits stumped when evaluating the Power Four conferences.
The Group of Five cannot be ignored either. Army (5-0), Navy (5-0) and Liberty (5-0) have dominated admirably but see their respective paths to the expanded College Football Playoff much more narrowed than the aforementioned teams.
Which surprising undefeated team has the best shot at the CFP?
If I had to whittle it down to two teams, Pittsburgh and Indiana are the most likely to snag at-large bids to the playoff at the very least. However, the former has the easier path to staying undefeated and playing for a conference title to clinch the ACC's auto-bid.
Pittsburgh's remaining schedule only features one matchup with a ranked opponent (Clemson, Nov. 16) and thus offers the greater chance to stay unblemished. However, other upcoming foes like Cal, Syracuse and SMU cannot be overlooked. Any one of those look ripe for an upset.
Indiana on the other hand, still must face Michigan (Nov. 9) and Ohio State (Nov. 23) if it wishes to compete for the Big Ten title as an undefeated. That path seems rather unlikely but a playoff bid certainly isn't out of the question, just much harder to achieve.
In the end, Pittsburgh has the upper hand at shocking the college football world after being picked to finish 13th in the preseason conference poll. However, they'll be in the spotlight much more now with quarterback Eli Holstein putting up historic numbers under center.