[stupac2]

There are so many games that have to be played to figure this all out.  Even now, it's a little too early.  As Ohio State showed last year, any 1 loss team of a power 5 conference has a shot, and probably no 2-loss team.

Exactly. Gaming out the scenarios now is fun if you're into that sort of thing, I guess, but it's astonishingly pointless. We know that we don't have any chance whatsoever if we don't win out, and that we have a pretty good chance if we do win out. We know we're helped by chaos in every other conference, so we want to root for upsets in those games (like that matters much). We're big Ole Miss fans, and FSU fans at least this week. We should probably be rooting for Michigan to win out, and maybe Oklahoma too. Iowa doesn't worry me, they've played a super soft schedule and will get stomped in the B1G title game, hopefully by Michigan. I still maintain that we want ND to lose another game because them being in the playoff is so unpalatable and the difference between beating a 9-2 ND and a 10-1 ND isn't meaningful, but others can disagree there.

If you look at all the things that could happen to get us into the playoff, there are dozens of ways. The least likely part of any of them, though, is us winning out. If we win out the odds of enough of the other things happening to get us into the playoff are so high that it doesn't really seem worth worrying about.

[stupac2]

There are so many games that have to be played to figure this all out.  Even now, it's a little too early.  As Ohio State showed last year, any 1 loss team of a power 5 conference has a shot, and probably no 2-loss team.

Exactly. Gaming out the scenarios now is fun if you're into that sort of thing, I guess, but it's astonishingly pointless. We know that we don't have any chance whatsoever if we don't win out, and that we have a pretty good chance if we do win out. We know we're helped by chaos in every other conference, so we want to root for upsets in those games (like that matters much). We're big Ole Miss fans, and FSU fans at least this week. We should probably be rooting for Michigan to win out, and maybe Oklahoma too. Iowa doesn't worry me, they've played a super soft schedule and will get stomped in the B1G title game, hopefully by Michigan. I still maintain that we want ND to lose another game because them being in the playoff is so unpalatable and the difference between beating a 9-2 ND and a 10-1 ND isn't meaningful, but others can disagree there.

If you look at all the things that could happen to get us into the playoff, there are dozens of ways. The least likely part of any of them, though, is us winning out. If we win out the odds of enough of the other things happening to get us into the playoff are so high that it doesn't really seem worth worrying about.