How much will Missouri football at Ole Miss result impact CFP race?

Neither Missouri football nor Ole Miss can cement their spot in the College Football Playoff this weekend.

But the Tigers and Rebels sure can help their cause.

A top-15 matchup is on deck between No. 13 Mizzou and No. 10/9 Ole Miss on Saturday in Oxford, Mississippi. The numbers next to those names don’t really mean a whole lot beyond talking points and fuel for arguments.

They’re more or less placeholders, semi-useful barometers, until the College Football Playoff rankings drop for the first time Nov. 3. But, they’re also all we have to work with.

And, as it stands in mid-October, they suggest a pretty important game is about to get played at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. 

Mizzou is No. 13 in the nation in both the coaches poll and the AP Top 25 heading to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium after back-to-back blowout wins over Florida and Texas A&M. Ole Miss is No. 10 in the coaches poll and No. 9 according to the AP voters.

Twelve teams will make the College Football Playoff field in December. One of those spots is guaranteed to go to the Group of Six, so the Tigers and Rebels essentially have to be top-11 teams in the country to make the dance when the field is selected.

The playoff committee could see it differently. For all we know, they have Mizzou and Ole Miss flipped.

But based on what we have available, here’s where things stand: Missouri is just on the outside looking in, and Ole Miss is in position to land an at-large berth.

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Both the Tigers and the Rebels are among the SEC’s large group of “one-defeateds,” or teams with one loss. Georgia is the only team left in the league with an unblemished record. Seven teams — Mizzou, Ole Miss, Alabama, Texas, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Tennessee — have one loss. 

That means half the league has reached the beginning of Week 7 without multiple losses. It’s too big of a leap, give or take an LSU run here or an Oklahoma revival there, to guess that the SEC’s playoff representatives are coming from the group of eight teams currently with one loss or less.

There’s a world that a 9-3 record at the end of the regular season gets a team into the CFP field. After all, the conference kicked up quite a fuss about moving to a nine-game league schedule with a requirement to face a Power-conference nonconference opponent.

It’s not impossible, but you’d feel a lot better if that first number — the one that charts wins — was in the double-digits. 

Which, back to the point at hand, is what makes this weekend so important for the Tigers, who head to Oxford .

Win, and there’s a not-unreasonable path to 10 wins for both teams.

Lose, and that path suddenly veers perilously close to the CFP cliff-edge.

Here’s Mizzou’s remaining schedule: at Arkansas (Oct. 31); vs. Texas (Nov. 7); at Georgia (Nov. 14); vs. Kentucky (Nov. 21); and vs. Oklahoma (Nov. 28).

That includes the current No. 1 team in the country in Georgia. Last week’s No. 1 team in the country in Texas. A top-25 Wildcats squad who look tough and ready to rumble under Will Stein. The Sooners, who just bounced last week’s No. 1 Longhorns. And there’s Arkansas, which we won’t say much more about.

ESPN’s FPI rankings currently calls that the second-toughest remaining schedule anywhere in the land.

Do you feel good about running the table there? Lose to Ole Miss, and that’s probably what it would take to get into the playoff. 

Again, the door remains creaked open for teams like Mizzou at 9-3, but that would require teams like Mississippi State, Florida, Texas A&M and more to close this year strong and give the Tigers a remarkably strong-looking schedule.  

Beat Ole Miss? Well, you’ve just bought yourself a mulligan. 

The same thing is true for the Rebels, who have a loss to Florida and will welcome Mizzou at 4-1 on the season and 2-1 in SEC play.

Mississippi also has Texas and Georgia on its schedule this year, as well as games against Oklahoma, Auburn and the ever-chaotic Egg Bowl against Mississippi State. 

Both teams have won enough over the opening six weeks to keep the playoff within their reach. There’s a long way to go, and it isn’t life or death in Oxford in the race for a CFP berth. 

But a win for either team means retaining some margin for error.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How much will Missouri football at Ole Miss result impact CFP race?