There’s half a college football season left to play, and among the wide range of possible story arcs is this fun one: Alabama and Notre Dame could miss the playoff, while BYU and James Madison could make it.
College football is not a sport where anything can happen. We sometimes like to pretend that it’s weirder than it is, and for good reason: The players are 18 to 24 years old, and there’s so much passion involved that admitting how predictable it all can be would dull edges that we’d prefer to be sharp. Throw out the records when these teams get together, we like to say, because this is a rivalry. (The rivalry game that most often prompts that line of analysis is the annual one between Oklahoma and Texas. Last week, Texas won a 34–3 rout that went much like a spreadsheet would’ve told you it would go.) More than in any other big sport, we know what will happen in college football, right down to which five or seven teams out of 134 have an honest chance to win the national championship.
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