The Tar Heels currently sit at number 15 in the CFP rankings. According to fivethirtyeight.com, they have a 6% chance to make the college football playoff. So what has to happen for the Tar Heels to leapfrog 11 teams and get into the top four?
First things first. They have to win out, and that includes the ACC championship over Clemson. Clemson is one of the teams in front of them. So that’s one team passed.
Also, I think just by winning out, the Tar Heels will leapfrog Penn State. I don’t see the committee putting two-loss Penn State in the CFP over one-loss, ACC champion Carolina. That’s two teams passed.
Then there are head-to-head matchups of two teams ahead of UNC where somebody has to lose, and the loser is likely to fall behind the Tar Heels. USC-UCLA, Oregon-Utah, and Alabama-Ole Miss fall into that category. That’s five teams passed. We’ve gotten the Tar Heels up to number 10.
LSU needs to lose a game. If it doesn’t happen against Arkansas or Texas A&M, Georgia will see to it in the SEC championship. That’s six teams passed.
So let’s review where we are. We’ve gotten the Tar Heels up to number 9. The eight teams in front of them are Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, Tennessee, TCU, the Oregon-Utah winner, the USC-UCLA winner, and the Alabama-Ole Miss winner. Who else can the Tar Heels leapfrog?
Let’s start with TCU. The Horned Frogs still have to play at Texas, at Baylor, Iowa State at home, and probably the Big 12 Championship. Fivethirtyeight gives TCU only a 10% chance to win out. Now the question is, is one TCU loss enough for UNC to pass them? It’s hard to say, and I’m not sure what the committee would do in that situation. It might depend on which game they lose. If TCU loses one regular season game but still wins the Big 12 Championship, I think they would still be ahead of the Tar Heels. The only safe bet for UNC is for TCU to lose two games. The good news is, with TCU’s remaining schedule, there’s a pretty good chance of that happening. So count TCU as a team the Tar Heels would have a decent chance of passing.
Then there’s the Pac-12. We’ve already noted that two of the four teams ahead of the Tar Heels are guaranteed to lose due to head-to-head matchups. But there are lots more opportunities for Pac-12 teams to lose. USC still has to play Notre Dame. Oregon, in addition to their game with Utah, still has to play Washington and at Oregon State. And then there’s the Pac-12 championship game. According to fivethirtyeight, Oregon has an 80% chance of losing at least one more game, USC 85%, UCLA 84%, and Utah 73%.
Other than all four Pac-12 teams losing, the best case scenario for the Tar Heels would probably be for Utah to win out and then to beat the USC-UCLA winner in the Pac-12 championship. This would mean at least one more loss for Oregon, USC, and UCLA. It’s not certain that two-loss Utah would remain ahead of one-loss UNC in the CFP standings.
The Pac-12 picture is complex, but suffice it to say that there is a good chance that the Tar Heels could pass all four.
Then there is the Alabama-Ole Miss winner. If it’s Ole Miss, they still have two more tough games remaining, at Arkansas and Mississippi State. The Rebels have only a 10% chance to win out according to fivethirtyeight. The other issue is that it’s unlikely that the Alabama-Ole Miss winner will play in the SEC Championship game. Will the committee put an SEC team that didn’t win its division in the playoff over one-loss ACC Champion Carolina? I don’t think so, although a one-loss Ole Miss team vs. one-loss UNC would be a tough call.
So now we’ve come up with plausible scenarios where the Tar Heels leapfrog everyone but Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, and Tennessee. Which of those four teams is leap-able?
Georgia… I don’t see that happening. They would have to lose two games, and they aren’t going to.
Tennessee still has a game at South Carolina. I don’t think they’ll lose, but it’s possible.
That brings us to Ohio State and Michigan. Obviously, they still have to play each other. So the first question is, could Carolina jump over the loser of that game? If it’s Ohio State, I say no. If it’s Michigan… I still don’t think so, unless the Buckeyes blow them out. That would be an interesting committee decision, to decide between a one-loss Big 10 team that didn’t win its division and one-loss ACC champion UNC. My guess is the Big 10 team would get the nod.
So I think the Tar Heels are going to need an upset. They need either Tennessee to lose another game, or for Ohio State or Michigan to lose another game besides their head-to-head matchup. Ohio State has a game at Maryland, Michigan has a game against Illinois, and of course there’s the Big 10 Championship.
How likely is all of this? Well, the good news for Tar Heel fans is that while UNC has but a 6% chance of making the CFP overall, that probability goes up to 51% if they win out. The teams they have to leapfrog have a lot of tough games left and most of them are going to lose one along the way. Based on the scenarios above, I can easily see the Tar Heels getting to number 5 if they win out. But passing one of the current top four is going to require an upset and is a bit of a stretch.