COLUMBIA, Mo. 鈥 There鈥檚 on ESPN鈥檚 website: a playoff predictor.
You start by picking one of 24 teams that the site has determined have the best chance of making the 12-team College Football Playoff this fall 鈥 Missouri has the eighth-highest chance, level with Tennessee and Oklahoma at 37%. Then you pick the result of a few key games for that team, and ESPN spits out an updated probability of that team grabbing a spot in the bracket based on your predicted results.
The three games the ESPN algorithm needs to see for its Mizzou-specific fortune telling are the expected ones: at Texas A&M, at Alabama and home against Oklahoma. Say the Tigers lose the first two and win the third, and they have an 84% chance of making the CFP 鈥 and still a 34% chance of hosting a first-round playoff game.
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That would likely lead to MU finishing the regular season 10-2, a popular predicted record for the Tigers.
Pick Missouri to win all three key games and ESPN spits out a 100% chance of getting in and hosting 鈥 it doesn鈥檛 matter what would happen in the Southeastern Conference title game in that scenario. Losses in all three drop MU鈥檚 CFP chances to a meager 7%.
Fiddle around with the options enough and a question that needs no computer simulations emerges: Just what record will be enough for Mizzou to make the playoff field at the end of the season? Will the Tigers be OK with two losses, or on the bubble? Could they sneak in with three losses?
The Post-Dispatch dug through the spreadsheets to answer those questions, looking back through every season since the College Football Playoff selection committee started putting out its final top 25 in 2014 to determine what the 12-team field would鈥檝e looked like each season.
It鈥檚 not a perfect exercise. For one, the committee was picking four-team playoffs, not the dozen it will be choosing moving forward. And the Pac-12 conference has all but evaporated this offseason, meaning it won鈥檛 be a factor in 2024 but was for the previous 10 seasons.
Still, the analysis is worth something. For one, it shows that an SEC team with two losses is likely to land in the top 12 鈥 and even three losses could be tolerable. But one precedent raises some concerns about what could hold a 10-2 Mizzou team back from a coveted playoff spot.
First, the quick explanation of how the CFP committee will construct a 12-team playoff field. Five teams will receive automatic bids: the five highest-ranked conference champions. Functionally, that will be the winners of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC title games, plus the Group of Five conference champion with the best ranking. Four of those auto bids will get the top four spots in the playoff, which comes with a first-round bye.
The seven at-large bids can go to any program from any conference. The SEC and Big Ten could split all of them. Another Group of Five team could slip in. A highly ranked Big 12 or ACC team that loses its conference championship game could merit a spot.
Got it?
The focus here, though, is on the SEC. The conference would have had 29 teams make it into the 12-team CFP over the course of the playoff era, an average of 2.9 per year. Five were undefeated, nine carried one-loss records, 10 had two losses and five had three losses.
Two-loss SEC teams have been very successful at making it into the top 12. Alabama鈥檚 2019 team is the only one that wouldn鈥檛 have made it into the CFP field, with every other two-loss program making the cut 鈥 including Georgia in the pandemic-busted 2020 season.
That also includes Mizzou in 2023, of course.
But what would have kept that 2019 鈥橞ama squad out of the 12-team CFP, and should it concern the Tigers?
Perhaps. That year, the Crimson Tide finished with the 40th-toughest schedule in the nation, according to ESPN. All of the other two-loss SEC teams, which all would鈥檝e qualified in the top 12, had strength of schedule coefficients that landed 19th or better in the country.
It鈥檚 true of the three-loss SEC teams that would鈥檝e made the cut, too: They each had the first-, ninth-, 10th-, 12th- and 37th-toughest schedules in the years of their playoff-caliber performances, with the latter 鈥 2018 Florida, which lost to MU 鈥 being an anomaly.
And it makes sense. That the CFP selection committee will make decisions based on strength of schedule seems fair and likely.
It could also be unnerving for Missouri. On the doorstep of the 2024 season, the Tigers鈥 strength of schedule sits 29th 鈥 10 spots below the threshold of 19th that has been enough for two-loss SEC teams to land among the chosen 12 in the past.
That metric can and will change over the course of the season, and it鈥檚 only one variable that could impact how the CFP committee will pick its debut 12-team field.
But for now, the Tigers seem like a team that 鈥 if they go 10-2 during the regular season 鈥 might be hoping their opponents have good seasons themselves to boost the strength of their 2024 schedule.