College Football Playoff, bowl projections: Paths for Ohio State, New Year’s Six hopefuls with berths clinched

With the penultimate College Football Playoff Rankings released Tuesday, it is time to examine the prospects for the teams still in the hunt for the four-team field. There are basically five teams in contention for those spots with only four of them actually competing in conference championship games played across Friday and Saturday.

Given it is such a short list this year, we have expanded this annual story to include a look at what possibilities exist for the four remaining New Year’s Six games outside of the playoff. There is not much flexibility with so many conference connections involved, but there is still some intrigue.

Without further ado, here is list of the remaining CFP contenders in order of their current ranking along with an explanation of what each team can accomplish this weekend. Let’s take a look how those teams stack up with Championship Week and the final CFP Rankings ahead.

College Football Playoff paths

New Year’s Six paths

The New Year’s Six options are more numerous. After the CFP pairings are set, the Rose, Sugar and Orange Bowls will select the teams for their games. Here is how that will go down.

Rose Bowl

If the Big Ten and/or Pac-12 champions advance into the playoff, the bowl gets to choose its replacements. Traditionally, those would be the highest-ranked teams remaining from those conferences. However, the Rose Bowl has the option to choose its entrants from a “cluster” of similarly rated teams.

If Michigan and USC both won this weekend, the Rose Bowl could have been left with a rematch of last year’s game featuring Ohio State and Utah. That would have been less than ideal. The Rose looked prepared to insert No. 8 Penn State from the Big Ten and/or No. 12 Washington from the Pac-12 to ensure the game was not a repeat. The Buckeyes played at the Rose Bowl twice in the last four years, while the Nittany Lions have not been in the game since 2016. The Huskies were a possibility from the Pac-12 as the Utes, in addition to playing the Rose Bowl last year, would have also taken their fourth loss.

However, all of that became moot Friday night with Utah beating USC to ensure the Pac-12 champion advances to the Rose Bowl. With Ohio State moving into the playoff and Michigan already locking up a spot, Penn State is now projected for the Rose Bowl as the Big Ten representative. The wildcard is Purdue, which would automatically be in this game if the…