Impact of Week 6 results on 2023 College Football Playoff

Week 6 was the usual in college football, which means of course it was chaos and insanity all over the place.

Here’s what everything means to everyone as we head down the stretch, where the rankings are starting to potentially mean something to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee.

College Football Playoff 2023: Week 6 impact

No. 12 Oklahoma 34, No. 3 Texas 30

Well then! Dillon Gabriel was magnificent, Texas turned it over three times, and the two best teams in the Big 12 could very possibly run it back in Arlington in December for the Big 12 title.

If that’s the case, it’s likely no harm and no foul for UT if they can run out the rest of their schedule. Vanquishing your only loss from a neutral field in the Metroplex with a win on a neutral field on the other side of the Metroplex should still be enough to make the cut. This stings in Austin, but it is certainly not fatal.

No. 10 Notre Dame 20, No. 25 Louisville 33

Deuces, Irish. Your CFP is Cooked For Playing (badly), and you deserve it after Ohio State beat you at home, and now this debacle. Giving up 33 points to Louisville’s, ahem, unenvied offense just ain’t good enough. Indiana only gave up 21! NC State just 13!

Meanwhile, Hey Cards: Don’t look past the Pitt Death Star next week, but you’ve probably got some wiggle room here! A loss at Miami or somewhere else later in the season won’t be a death blow if you can win the ACC Championship, and somehow you dodge Florida State, North Carolina, and Clemson during the regular season. A 12-1 ACC Champion has a good chance to be a Playoff team, and a 13-0 one is almost a lock.

We know FSU feels the same way however, and they’d be a big favorite in an ACC title game.

Georgia Tech 23, No. 17 Miami 20

Seriously, Mario Cristobal: You embarrassed yourself and your program. Even if you win out, you can’t be in the Playoff now. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them. But what you did was a galactic failure, and cannot be shamed enough.

Coaches ask players to give everything over to the staff, and not to question their methods. Every player in your locker room is rightly questioning you now. We’re still nauseous thinking about it.

No. 11 Alabama 26, Texas A&M 20

The Aggies are cooked, and not just because they lost to Miami as well. Now they’d need Bama to likely lose twice to make the SEC Championship, and that’s probably not going to happen.

Meanwhile Alabama might have been beaten by Texas at home, and they might have needed some breaks to beat South Florida 17-3 (the same South Florida that gave up 56 points to UAB today), but they still control their destiny. If they win the SEC title in Atlanta, they’ll play on New Year’s Day in the Rose or Sugar Bowl.

The problem is if they lose to Georgia in the SEC Championship again, they’ll likely be out. There are just too many good teams this year for a two-loss team even from the best conference by power rating.

How we’ll find the last four

Pac-12 winner: Washington, USC, and Oregon all still play each other, and the top two in the standings at season’s end will do it again for the final Pac-12 Championship. As loaded as the league has been this year, any one of the three teams above gets in with a 13-0 record, and even 12-1 should be plenty.

SEC winner: It’s a down year for the league, and you could argue the Pac-12 is actually stronger. But it’s still very tough to envision a scenario where an SEC champion gets left home. The only real consideration is if a 12-0 and No. 1 Georgia falls in the title game, would they have already done enough to steal a bid from someone else?

Big Ten winner (if from East): Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State all are undefeated and yet to play. Whomever emerges will be a massive favorite in the Big Ten Championship Game, and that team should be in the Playoff.

Big 12 winner: If Oklahoma or Texas runs out from here, they’re probably in. The Red River game today was like Part I of II, and the winner of the second game probably gets the bid.

ACC winner: A 13-0 Florida State is probably in, and they won’t meet either of the other undefeated teams from the league in Louisville or North Carolina during the regular season. UL and UNC don’t play each other either, so there is a nightmare scenario where the ACC has three 8-0 teams, and only two can play for the conference championship. The tiebreaker there CFP Committee Ranking, which... oof, not how you want to decide this.

Now we just need one of the above to not happen, and we’ll have our last-ever four-team College Football Playoff. This will be much easier with 12 teams starting next season.