Here we will provide a weekly description of the thought process behind any playoff eliminations.
Akron
(1 Team Eliminated)*
Each week we’ll update the graphic on the home page to reflect the “elimination” of teams from the College Football Playoff (CFP) race. Akron is ineligible for the postseason due to a low Academic Progress Rate. So we start the season with 135 teams in the CFP race.
I was ready to eliminate Delaware and Missouri State (the newest members of the Football Bowl Subdivision) as new teams are typically ineligible for the postseason (with some exceptions) due to their transition period. However, Delaware and Missouri State are bowl-eligible if there are not enough teams available to fill the available bowl slots. The problem is that both teams are not eligible to win the Conference USA title. This precludes them from being a potential automatic CFP qualifier.
Recall that CFP spots are available to the five highest-ranked conference champions. Presumably, this will be the four power conference champions (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC) plus the highest ranked Group of Five champion. This means that Delaware and Missouri State’s only path (highly implausible, but not completely impossible) is to be selected as one of the seven at-large teams. We’ll these teams as “not eliminated” team for the moment, but a single loss will be enough to remove them from contention. In short, I’ll eat the laptop I’m typing this on if either of these teams makes the CFP.