If LSU wins, the top 5 teams going into tonight's OSU-Wisconsin game will be:
1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Clemson
4. Oklahoma or Baylor
5. Wisconsin
And get this! The ENTIRE SPORTS WORLD agrees that if Wisconsin beats Ohio State tonight...
...nothing happens.
Makes sense, right?
1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Clemson
4. Oklahoma or Baylor
5. Wisconsin
And get this! The ENTIRE SPORTS WORLD agrees that if Wisconsin beats Ohio State tonight...
...nothing happens.
Makes sense, right?
1/ I guess what I'm saying is, I'm looking forward to ESPN analysts and sports analysts the nation over explaining to sports fans at the beginning of the #1 OSU-vs-#5 Wisconsin game tonight that it is "very straightforward" why the game has *zero* CFP implications for either team
2/ A better analysis from CNN/ESPN and everyone else would've been to say that as of this morning, things are pretty straightforward inasmuch as LSU and OSU victories make the top 4 a fait accompli, and a Georgia win with a OSU win likewise, but a Wisconsin win causes UTTER CHAOS
3/ (Yes, I understand the number before Wisconsin when it plays tonight will be "8," yet I equally understand that the actual conditions that the game will be played under are ones in which Georgia, Utah and Baylor will have dropped "behind" Wisconsin by the time the game starts)
4/ For those who don't know, the CFP system and culture establishes that the committee considers not just record or body of work but where the teams are at eye test-wise at the end of the year. I'm not predicting anything about tonight's game—just posing a hypothetical situation.
5/ I find it interesting that the statisticians say Wisconsin has a 51% chance of getting into the CFP if it wins tonight, but all you can get sports fans to say is "Wisconsin won't win!" Why won't folks play along and consider the oddness of the hypothetical situation described?
6/ We've never before seen so many sports fans saying that an effective #1 losing to an effective #5 would have no chance of causing the latter to jump over the former in the rankings. People *do* realize that 2-loss teams get ranked ahead of 1-loss teams *all the time*, right?
7/ I mean, don't get me wrong, I *totally* get the argument for OSU staying ahead of Wisconsin even if it loses tonight. All I'm saying is that I don't get why statisticians can easily see the opposite result—but sports fans can't. I just find that a conceptually weird situation.
8/ I think everyone comes to sports for a different reason, and that's okay. There are some people looking for *sense*, and to those folks there'll always be a good argument for OSU being better than UW, basically every year. Some of us are rooting for underdog-driven chaos. /end
PS/ I want to repeat that the top CFP prediction website, @FiveThirtyEight, has Wisconsin with a 51% chance to make the CFP if they win tonight. So there are many fine responses to this thread, but saying I don't understand NCAAF after watching it for 25 years isn't one of them.
@FiveThirtyEight SOURCE/ Feel free to disagree with me. Just don't pretend that I've taken the minority view of how this (perhaps, I freely concede, quite obscure) hypothetical *could* play out. Here's what the top oddsmakers say about LSU and Wisconsin wins tonight, in terms of CFP admission: 
@FiveThirtyEight UPDATE/ @FiveThirtyEight has updated its model to reflect a 50% chance of Wisconsin making the CFP if it, LSU, and Oklahoma win today. The latter two are considered likely, whereas Wisconsin has a *very* steep hill to climb. But the way they played against Minnesota... who knows.
