What needs to happen for top teams to play in the biggest bowl games?
Nov 29, 2023
at
2:33 pm ET
•
4 min read
USATSI
With the penultimate College Football Playoff Rankings released Tuesday, it is time to examine the prospects for the teams still in the hunt for the four-team field. This has undoubtedly been the chalkiest season of the CFP era. For the first time ever, the top four teams entering conference championship weekend are all undefeated. That allows for the possibility of the first-ever such playoff field, but it also creates the potential for chaos this weekend because it’s going to be competitive at the top of the rankings.
Eight teams are still in play for the College Football Playoff. The only sure thing is that the Pac-12 champion will make the CFP for the first time since Washington was the No. 4 seed in 2016. It is also exceedingly likely that we will have a playoff with only conference champions for the first time since 2019. Basically, the four unbeaten teams and No. 6 Oregon control their own playoff fate.
Without further ado, here is list of the remaining CFP contenders in order of their current ranking along with an explanation of what each team can accomplish this weekend. Let’s take a look at how those teams stack up with Championship Week and the final CFP Rankings that are ahead.
College Football Playoff paths
Beyond this list of contenders, CBS Sports released my updated bowl projections for the 2023-24 season last Sunday. Reminder: These projections are not how things stand now but rather how I expect them to look following the conference championship games Saturday.