One-loss teams could cause chaos

— -- What if ... Georgia wins the SEC, but Ole Miss and Mississippi State each have only one loss?

What if ... Notre Dame's only loss is on the road to the defending national champs?

What if ... the Pac-12 champ has two losses?

What if ... Ohio State wins the Big Ten?

It certainly wouldn't be the first time we've had a little chaos -- but it will be the first time there's a group of 13 people tasked with sorting it out. If the unprecedented number of upsets in the first half of the season were any indication of what's in store, the College Football Playoff's selection committee is going to have a great debate in its inaugural season.

What's not up for debate is the fact that there will be at least one team in the playoff with a loss (sorry, Marshall, you're excluded from this conversation). Considering what has happened so far, and the direction this season is headed, it could wind up looking a lot like 2008, when a hungry pack of one-loss teams was trampling over each other in a fight to reach the top.

College football could make this very easy and leave us three undefeated Power 5 teams (Florida State, Baylor and a team from Mississippi).

Sure. And Phyllis from Mulga will start cheering for Auburn.

The more likely scenario is that by the end of November, this season resembles 2008, when there were seven one-loss teams, and two undefeated teams in Boise State and Utah. Here's the good news: The selection committee has practiced this. They've done their walk-through, and they used the 2008 season -- a year in which two teams from the same conference (Texas and Oklahoma) were both awarded a spot in the top four.

(Repeating for SEC fans: Two teams. Same conference.)

A word of caution, though. Don't forget Alabama at 12-1 - with its only regular-season loss coming to Florida in the SEC title game -- was pretty darn good in 2008. Only the SEC champ, though, was voted in.

(Repeating for SEC fans: Only the SEC champ got in.)

Good luck trying to pinpoint the metric that matters most at this point. The biggest lesson learned from the committee's 2008 mock is that conference titles carry a lot of weight -- but each team's résumé also can speak for itself. Should the committee vote for two teams from the same league when it counts, committee chair Jeff Long -- the lone voice of the group -- will have to defend why it left out a conference champ.

Rest assured Barry Alvarez will have his reasons behind each vote he casts.

"I found that having gone through it, the mental gymnastics already, I had my statistics in our mock exercise and where these teams ranked and why I had someone ahead of someone else," said Alvarez, also Wisconsin's athletic director. "There was a reason why, not just because historically they've been good. You've got to go by their body of work."

That's still evolving.

Oklahoma and Baylor still have to play. Notre Dame and USC. Oregon and Stanford. Michigan State and Ohio State. The Egg Bowl.

If there's another mess of one-loss teams, the committee members each will have to determine what matters most to them should a tiebreaker be needed: A conference champion? Head-to-head results? Strength of schedule? Eye test?

"I feel we're going to be balancing a number of things," selection committee member Condoleezza Rice said. "To a certain extent you have to respect a team that wins the games it plays. Wins and losses matter. Secondly, you have to respect strength of schedule.

"The value of this committee is we come from a lot of different experiences and a lot of different perspectives," she said. "But I am not going into this with any preconceptions except to say that the commissioners rightly tell us that we should pay attention to strength of schedule, conference champions. When you think about it, why wouldn't you?"

As they discuss each team and analyze the statistics, it's very possible that one committee member could be persuasive enough to sway another's vote. Should Ohio State win out, for example, the committee will have to decide if it wants to give the Buckeyes leniency for a home loss against Virginia Tech because starting quarterback Braxton Miller suffered a season-ending injury in August. That was J.T. Barrett's first home game as the full-time starter.

One committee member might vote the Buckeyes in, another might not.

In spite of how difficult it might be to determine the top four teams in the country this year, the committee's final vote won't be its toughest job -- defending it will be.