Dumping Them Out – Too Many Good Teams Not Enough Great Ones

John Rich11/08/2026 6:30 PM

Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out. It took 10 weeks (plus a 0 week) of college football, but with Texas beating Missouri and Vanderbilt beating Mississippi State yesterday, you can now use the transitive property to conclude that every team in the SEC is the best team in the SEC.

Vanderbilt beat Mississippi State – Mississippi State beat South Carolina – South Carolina beat Tennessee – Tennessee beat Auburn – Auburn beat Georgia – Georgia beat Alabama – Alabama beat Kentucky – Kentucky beat Oklahoma – Oklahoma beat Texas – Texas beat Missouri – Missouri beat Florida – Florida beat Ole Miss – Ole Miss beat LSU – LSU beat Texas A&M. –Texas A&M beat Arkansas – Arkansas beat Vanderbilt.

And every one of those was a quality loss. Incredible.

What the hell happens to Tennessee in the playoff rankings now? After beating Kentucky 34-6, they now have a blowout win over the #6 team in the country. They also have a fairly convincing win over Alabama, who the committee had at #5 this week. Are they really going to have the balls to rank Tennessee lower than Alabama when Tennessee has a win over them head-to-head?

We only have 3 weeks remaining in the regular season, and looking at the playoff rankings, there are maybe only 3(?) teams/fanbases who can honestly say they're confident that they'll make the playoffs. Here are the playoff rankings headed into this week (records updated to reflect this week's games).

Georgia should feel fine. They're probably about to be the #1 team in the country with only 1 loss, and games vs Missouri, South Carolina, and Georgia Tech (before the SEC Championship, which won't eliminate anybody).

Notre Dame should feel fine. Now that they've beaten #1 Miami and are about to be ranked in the top 5, they might even be able to get away with losing to either Boston College, SMU, or Syracuse.

Utah must feel good. They've got two strong wins over BYU and Houston. They're undefeated. They have Arizona, TCU, and West Virginia to go. I don't want to say they can drop two of them… but maybe they could? I'm so used to Utah blowing it that it feels wrong to say they're feeling comfortable, but they're in as good of a spot as anyone.

Those 3 might be the only truly comfortable ones. Now it starts to get dicey. UCLA is still undefeated, and their win over Oregon is looking better now than it did at the time. They have Illinois, Michigan, and USC left on their schedule. Going 2-1 for sure gets them in, but all three of those games could very well be a sweat.

I guess Miami should still feel confident? They did lose Malachi Toney for the regular season, but with only 1 loss they have just Duke, Virginia Tech, and Boston College left. That's not a gauntlet. They don't have the best strength of schedule to fall back on, but they could maybe still lose one of those if they go on to beat a Wake Forest in the ACC Championship.

Nobody else can afford to lose a game. Maybe Indiana, because they'd still only have 2 losses? But the way they've been looking, as an Indiana fan, I don't feel "locked in" to a playoff spot whatsoever. I guess Alabama should feel okay, but they might not be able to afford another loss either. The Iron Bowl could always become a problem. Nobody in the SEC is good enough this year to definitely not lose to Auburn.

From there, you've got 2-loss teams in Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and BYU. Even Houston, Iowa, and USC could manage to sneak in.

We still have 1-loss teams in Wake Forest and Texas Tech. If they both finish the regular season with a single loss, the voters can't leave either of them out in favor of a 3-loss team. There would be riots.

Finally, we have the 3-loss SEC teams LSU, Ole Miss, Missouri, and South Carolina. We might even have 3-loss Big Ten teams come into play, Ohio State and Oregon, if things get crazy enough.

Let's see, did I leave anyone out? Boise State is probably going to win out and take the G6 spot without controversy. Although it would be a lot cooler (in my opinion) if New Mexico snuck in there. Arizona only has 2 losses, is ranked, and plays Utah next week. So if Arizona gets a win over the #2 team in the country, they're going to have an argument to make.

I love the irony of the 24-team college football playoff being announced at the beginning of this year. Everyone hated the idea, but this season turned out to be the perfect year for it. There's too many good teams and not enough great ones. I don't think there's a single team in the Top 25 right now that wouldn't be capable of pulling an upset over a #1 seed.