If the season somehow ends after Week 0, here’s your Playoff!
Look, it’s best to be overly prepared, just in case we need this.
[Note: for actual, serious information about the 2018 Playoff picture, go to this post instead.]
Hello, new newsletter subscribers. Here’s a stupid tradition we do around here after each Week 0. Please bear with.
The opening Saturday of 2018 college football saw all of five Division I games, with only the FCS game involving ranked teams and only two involving FBS-on-FBS action.
But we must remain prepared anyway.
If, by some act of God or government order or global outbreak, the rest of the regular season is canceled and we’re forced to scrape together a College Football Playoff based only on what we learned in Week 0 (college football: the sport in which the name of the opening day would also work as the name of a nuclear fallout movie), then ...
Here’s our Playoff picture:
8. Rice, which needed a rally to hold off Prairie View, not exactly the toughest FCS opponent.
7. Jacksonville State. Absolutely, an FCS team that lost an FCS game ranks ahead of FBS Rice. Barely losing to a team on a 13-game winning streak is better than barely beating a mediocre FCS team.
6. North Carolina A&T, the FCS team on a 13-game winning streak. Strongly considered for the No. 5 spot, but unfortunately, UMass put up a ton of points.
5. UMass. Beating Duquesne is nothing special, but winning by 48 points really caught the Week 0 Committee’s eye. Eye, singular, because the Week 0 Committee has had most of its faces eaten by the zombie plague that’s preventing the rest of the regular season from happening. Nice work, UMass.
4. Bama. The Tide haven’t won their division, meaning they’ve basically clinched a Playoff spot.
3. Hawaii, which won an upset thriller on the road at a talented, turbulent Colorado State and earned the first conference win of anybody in Division I.
2. Wyoming, for completely flattening New Mexico State on the road and playing like a Craig Bohl team that looked up and said, “We lost our famous quarterback? Guess we’ll just run the hell out of the ball and play grouchy defense.” New QB Tyler Vander Waal looked fine.
1. Also Bama. Can’t take any chances.
Also, here’s all the silly stuff that happened in Week 0.