With three weeks left in college football's regular season, before the most eventful and consequential Championship Week the sport has seen, there are still 29 teams with at least a 3% chance of reaching the College Football Playoff, per the Allstate Playoff Predictor. Twenty of those teams are at 14% or higher, and only five are at 80% or higher.
The race for the 12 spots in the first year of the expanded playoff remains messy and delightful, and Saturday's action only enhanced that. Miami's ACC title odds took a major hit (and SMU's got a boost) with the Hurricanes' upset loss at Georgia Tech. Ole Miss' top-five breakthrough win over Georgia shook up the SEC race and gave the Rebels a potentially major boost in the CFP race. Alabama's 42-13 romp at LSU eliminated the Tigers from the playoff hunt and reminded everyone that the Crimson Tide's ceiling remains ridiculously high. And BYU staved off the Big 12 chaos demons with a controversial last-second comeback win over rival Utah (while Colorado continued to look very much like a Big 12 contender itself).
It was a heck of a Saturday (aren't they all in the fall?), but when we're talking about the CFP race, and we talk about all the teams that could make the field, we're not talking about who's likely to actually win the title. Even with a large playoff that will inevitably feature random and surprising results, seven teams -- Texas (17.2%), Ohio State (16.9%), Alabama (15.5%), Oregon (7.8%), Notre Dame (7.6%), Georgia (6.9%) and Penn State (5.1%) -- combine to have a 77% chance to win the title, per the Predictor. Add in three more (Ole Miss 4.9%, Tennessee 4.6% and Indiana 4.1%), and we're past 90%.
While we wait to see who can claim a spot in the field, let's take the time to look at who might actually win it all if they get there. More specifically, let's talk about the 25 people, games and units that are most likely to have a say in who takes the national title.
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Two huge games | Five potential upsets
Five key units
Three spoilers | Three 50-50s
Seven QBs | Week 11 surprises
Heisman of week | 10 favorite games