Week 2 of the predictions are hot-and-ready. I waited until after the release of the first Playoff Committee rankings, which I generally use to get an idea of how they’re thinking, at least at this early juncture.

It’s still a bit too early to get too far into the weeds on details, so let’s just hit the salient points for now:

• I’m predicting that Alabama defeats Georgia in the SEC championship, that Clemson wins out, Ohio State wins out, and Notre Dame wins out. Which put me in a bind for the last spot in the playoff. Notre Dame would have one loss, that 20-19 loss to Georgia back in September. Georgia would have that win, but also a very recent loss to Alabama in the SEC championship. Humans are prone to recency bias, which hurts Georgia’s chances, but (unfortunately) Georgia’s wins over Notre Dame and Auburn would be better than Notre Dame’s best two wins in this scenario (probably the wins over Southern Cal and NC State). 
• I actually did have 80 teams this time, which was nice. You can also see my running tally of eligible teams, and we’re already nearly halfway there.
• There are more than a few teams that will only have 11 games, and I wonder if worse comes to worse the NCAA will allow 5-6 teams to be picked ahead of 5-7 teams that get in on APR or if they’ll just still be eligible. (Of course, this never came up back when the season was only, you know, 11 games, but there were a lot less bowl games back then.)
• At least once each year I predict Texas and Texas A&M will play in a Texas-based bowl, and while I realize that it probably won’t happen, it’s fun to think about.