COLUMBUS, Ohio – The world is still almost a month away from the first release of the College Football Playoff rankings and the national semifinals are more than 70 days away but that does not keep people from talking about who will be in the top-four and if the Big Ten will actually get its champion in the playoff and the four-team tournament to crown a CFP Champion.

Ohio State is sitting home this weekend for the open weekend with six games under its belt while most teams are catching up already having sat out a week and getting to the six-game mark. For what it is worth, there already seems to be a pretty clear division line between the teams that really have a shot at making the playoff and the rest of the field who still are playing for New Year's Six games, but know it would take a massive amount of chaos in the upper reaches of college football to be inserted back into the mix.

There are 16 undefeated teams going into the weekend of football with 12 of those teams coming out of Power Five conferences. With apologies to SMU, Memphis, Boise State and Appalachian State, it would likely take a rash of two-loss power five champions to open the door for a group of five team to make the four-team field, as evidenced by Central Florida never making the cut, winning a bowl game and then going to Disney to declare itself a national champion.

For the sake of our exercise, we are just going to cross the group of five off the list right now and focus on the power five, as the football gods intended.

This does not mean that the field of four will absolutely be made out of this list of 12 undefeated teams, in fact we are pretty certain that someone on this list will likely barge its way into the field, if not more than one. Undefeated teams do a crazy thing, they lose games, especially when they are forced to face off against one another. There is still half a season of football left to be played and nobody, maybe outside of Clemson, really has a clear shot to the field of four without a speedbump of three along the way.

Let's take a look in a conference by conference breakdown of how things will shape up for the final six-plus games of the season (because there always is that last hurdle of a conference championship game, a great money grab for the league but a loss too late in the season for any conference outside of the SEC to explain away).

Atlantic Coast Conference

Undefeated teams: Clemson, Wake Forest

Party crasher: Virginia

Remaining game of the year: ACC Championship Game

The Clemson invitational is still intact after Mack Brown decided that running the option on a two-point conversion try, at home, when an extra point would have forced overtime and Clemson was not moving the ball with any success, was the right idea as Carolina had the Tigers on the ropes. The past is the past however and maybe another team will get lucky and catch the Tigers on another off day. Clemson has been quite un-Clemson-like this season in its five wins, Trevor Lawrence has not looked nearly as sharp as he did last season and maybe the repeated loss of first-round defensive lineman after first-round defensive lineman has caught up as the Tigers are not impervious on defense as in years past.

While Clemson and Wake Forest still play each other mid-November, the Demon Deacons being undefeated is probably more a matter of who they have played more so than how they have played (call them Carolina-Minnesota for that reason). Yes, Wake beat UNC by more than Clemson did, but wins against Elon and Rice are hardly all that exciting. Boston College is down this year and Utah State is the third most exciting team in the Beehive State and a non-factor.

No, the potential UVA vs. Clemson matchup would really be the only true hiccup on the schedule, and we are not all that excited by what the Wahoos have been about this year. They did beat Florida State but so have most teams with a pulse. Winning at Pitt may prove to be a pretty good win, especially with how they played Penn State close in a rivalry game, but it is a lot easier for the Panthers to get up for an in-state tilt than any league game in football in a conference that Pitt has next to zero history in. That Notre Dame game, even in a loss, may be the biggest indicator that UVA might be able to compete against Clemson, provided that Clemson doesn't get it all figured out by December. We don't like the chances of that happening and feel while the Tigers may still have some very real flaws, no other team in the ACC is well-rounded enough to expose those flaws in a 60-minute game.

Big 12 Conference

Undefeated teams: Baylor, Oklahoma

Party crasher: Texas

Remaining game of the year: Texas vs. Oklahoma

With apologies to Baylor, we are not all that concerned about you and your 5-0 record. Yes, that Iowa State win looks pretty good and the win over Kansas State may have looked good in the late-1990s when the Wildcats were still relevant in Bill Snyder's first go-round as head coach. But wins over SFA, UT-San Antonio and Rice are cute. The Bears will have a loss or two before they face off with either Oklahoma (11/16) or Texas (11/23). We feel very confident in saying that.

No, this is going to come down to Texas and Oklahoma. Sure, the Horns already have a loss but if they can get past Oklahoma this weekend in the annual Red River Showdown at Jerry World, the Horns are back in the mix, even with one-loss and the Sooners are de factor behind in line with the H-2-H loss. Now, if this happens, expect the calls for 14 SEC teams to populate the four playoff slots to grow louder. Hey, it just means more and there are plenty of eager talking heads who just want to continue that farcical narrative that the SEC should not only get two teams in the playoff, but maybe three.

The Horns and Sooners are far-and-away the best two teams in the league and barring an absolute collapse, the two will face off again in the Big 12 championship game as well. Now, what happens if there is a split, one wins this weekend and the other wins in December? Does that even dilute the Big 12's chances more because nobody really has emerged as the dominant team and the potential is there that a two-loss league champion is crowned if Oklahoma wins in October and Texas wins in December? It would be best for this league if the same team wins both games and then can make the argument that the cream rose to the top and the best team proved to be dominant and obviously if that team is Oklahoma, it could be sitting at 13-0 and if the winner is Texas, the argument is there that it played LSU tough, and despite being a home loss, it took care of business along the way and beat the Sooners twice.

Big Ten Conference

Undefeated teams: Ohio State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Minnesota

Party crasher: Michigan

Remaining game of the year: Penn State at Ohio State

Let's address the elephant in the room, we don't think that Michigan really is going to crash the party, but strange things happen in football and the Wolverines still have games against Ohio State and Penn State. We thought about a team like Iowa maybe being the crasher, then we had visceral flashbacks to Iowa putting up ONE lousy yard on the ground and turning the ball over four times in the ugliest of games against Michigan and came to our senses.

Minnesota is on the list of undefeated teams, but we are not buying the Gophers in the slightest bit. Yes, Minnesota did something this year that Ohio State could not do last year, travel to Purdue and win, but the Boilermakers lost two of their best players in that contest with the losses of Elijah Sindelar and Rondale Moore. Wins over Illinois, Georgia Southern, Fresno State and South Dakota State round out one of the weakest schedules in D-1 FBS football. A final five-game stretch of Maryland, Penn State, Iowa, Northwestern (well, maybe not Northwestern) and Wisconsin will hand the Gophers multiple losses and we can all have a good laugh that we even had to write about them here in October.

Wisconsin seems to have the Big Ten West on lockdown, but that does not mean an undefeated season is assured with a big road game at Ohio State at the end of the month and a potential rematch in the Big Ten championship game. Michigan State could prove to be a challenge, if only for the fact that they can play some defense but the Badgers should have gone to school on what the Buckeyes did and then wind up Jonathan Taylor and let him go as the Spartans will not be put points up on the Badgers.

With apologies to 'The Game' the truth of the matter is that the 2019 game of the year will be Penn State at Ohio State. The Buckeyes have faced good offenses (that proved not to be good offenses) and have faced good defenses (that proved to have a strong start only to peter out as the game went on). Penn State will bring in what appears to be 'both', and everyone will need to see where the chips will land after that one. According to the Sagarin Ratings, Ohio State should be about a 10.5-point favorite in the game on a neutral field and then homefield should get that up to about 13 points. The last three games have been decided by a total of five points, with Ohio State winning the last two games. With where this game falls on the schedule, as long as neither team falters (Ohio State to Wisconsin or Penn State still having Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State and Minnesota before that game) if both go into the contest unblemished, the winner of that game should have a trophy to pick up after that game in the locker room and then just try and survive the final week (Penn State has Rutgers while the Buckeyes obviously have Michigan).

Pac-12 Conference

Undefeated teams: None

Party crasher: Oregon

Remaining game of the year: Pac-12 Championship Game

The Pac-12 wants to be in the race but they just can't seem to get out of their own way, or out of the way of anyone for that matter. They don't have any undefeated teams at this point of the season and things are not going to get any better as the season goes along. The Pac-12 not only has zero undefeated teams overall, it only has two teams with undefeated league marks, the Arizona Wildcats and the Oregon Ducks. Even with all of this, the Pac-12 does have ranked teams but they are pretty far behind the "top dozen" teams and because of that, the Pac-12 is going to need a lot of chaos in the final weeks of the season to bring the pack back to them.

We could go on and on about how it is a long season, and anything is possible but what we don't see being possible is a Pac-12 team running the table from this point on and sitting with just one loss at the end of the season. Arizona and Oregon will still play each other in the regular season and being in separate divisions, could in theory play each other twice in about the span of a month. We just don't see any way, barring a streak of upsets like we have not seen in quite some time, where the Pac-12 will have any legitimate shot at getting into the CFP, especially now that the genie is out of the bottle in terms of a league getting more than one team in the playoff. We definitely could see the SEC absorbing that spot without much thought if another league were to falter along the way as well and leave an opening, and maybe even if that does not happen based on the way that this committee has operated for the last couple of years once they convene in the boardroom in Grapevine (Texas).

Southeastern Conference

Undefeated teams: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, LSU

Party crasher: Auburn

Remaining game(s) of the year: LSU at Alabama, Florida at Georgia

Well, maybe we should just crown them all.

Bitter?

Nah, not at all.

Just have been down this road before and seen the mouthpieces for the SEC come out in force and start chirping while the conference deserves more, better and to hell with the rest.

Now, if I were in that position, I would try and get the same for my own interests, so I can't be upset that they are trying to protect their own.

But as someone who does not cover a SEC team, really has no ties (outside of a wife who is an Ole Miss alum, and they are horrible) to the conference, I just get a little sick and tired of this white glove treatment that they have been vetting, even with a great run of championships, two of them at Ohio State's misfortune.

Nobody should be surprised that Alabama and Georgia are on this list, just based out of recent history for the Bulldogs and a much longer history for Alabama. LSU might be a surprise in some regards based on Ed Orgeron's track record and the fact that LSU has struggled to put a decent offense on the field for many years.

Enter Joe Burrow.

Florida on the other hand, that is a bit of a shock.

The Gators versus Auburn was going to be a big elimination game and the Gators passed that test. Granted, we don't think they will pass the next one or the one after that.

No, this is really going to come down to who comes out of the West with Alabama and LSU and then can UGA continue to run the table in the weaker East division?

Honestly, LSU has looked the most dominant at this point but is that a hangover of everyone remembering the win over Texas and keeping that vision fresh in their minds rather than looking at things on a game-by-game basis?

Are people sleeping on Alabama? The Crimson Tide have been far from dominating in terms of what people are used to seeing but they are winning games and that is all you need to do at this point, especially with the cache that Bama has earned through the years.

The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party (don't like the name? Come at me bro) will mean a lot as we should see UGA separate itself from the pack on that half of the SEC. What happens if Florida gets by UGA? Well, that would certainly create some ripples in the SEC. The Gators are better without Felipe Franks at quarterback in our opinion but do they have enough offense to keep up with UGA?

As for the west, we don't care about the Iron Bowl at this point of the season, while that game will mean something for certain at the end, it is going to be the LSU/Bama game when the Bayou Bengals visit Tuscaloosa (Ala.). If this game were in Death Valley, we might feel better about LSU's chances, but it might be too much to overcome at Bama.

Just as important as outcomes will be how close some of these games are as the 'allies' will start to spin what a close loss means compared to those "other inferior conferences". The blood pressure is already starting to boil with the thought of that.