Fair thee well College Football Playoff! We never really knew you. Hello, Cotton Bowl… maybe?!?
The path to the Cotton Bowl is more convoluted than the path to the AAC Championship. Let’s look at the rules and then what needs to happen.
First and foremost, to be the auto-G5 bid you have to have won your conference championship. Then you have to be the highest ranked G5 conference champion in the CFP. If there is no ranked G5 champion, then the CFP Committee will decide the champion that will be in the NY6 bowl, this year the Cotton. Two G5s could technically be selected. One representing the G5 auto bid and another that gets an at-large bid that would have gone to a P5 candidate. The likelihood of that happening is about as slim as us getting into the CFP. The committee would have to consider two G5s “worthy” enough of that honor… Uhh, unlikely!
So, here is what has to happen:
See the thread “Lets break down the path to the AAC Championship.” Without the AAC championship, we are not eligible unless we receive an at-large bid.
We have to beat Louisville and win out.
3a) We have to hope that the CFP believes a one-loss Houston’s schedule was tougher, and therefore, more deserving than Boise St. I actually believe this is very likely, especially if Louisville and Oklahoma keep winning.
3b) …or we need Boise St to lose.
We get an at-large birth to play Boise St in the Cotton. This, in my opinion, has less than a 1% chance of happening, so refer to my above comments.
I’m hoping that our guys hated the taste of losing so much that there’s no chance they’ll lose again. That’s going to be a tall order when it comes to Louisville, but the rest of the conference slate should be fairly easy until we get to Memphis. I firmly believe Navy will lose at least 1, and possibly 2 conference games the rest of the way. The scheme they put in for us, that apparently they haven’t used against anyone else, coupled with the fact that they lost to Air Force and barely scraped by UConn and Tulane, likely means they have focused all their time and attention on us. They have ECU this week which they should win easily (but they’re currently favored by only 3.5), but then they have Memphis and USF back to back. I think they’ll lose 1 or both of those games. If that happens, all we have to do is beat Memphis and hope Boise doesn’t pass us up. Really wish we could have gone undefeated, but this thing is far from over. #GoCoogs
EDIT: If ever there was a let down/trap game, it is Navy at ECU this Thursday. Navy should beat ECU handily, but coming off such a huge victory, I won’t be shocked if they come out flat and lose this game.
