College football Week 8 recap - Playoff contenders stock watch - ESPN

In Week 8, college football officially got cranky. Georgia emerged from its 30-15 statement win over Texas raging at officials and leaning as hard as ever into «No one believes in us» nonsense. Alabama and Tennessee could only fight the officials to a draw during a penalty festival in Knoxville, one that put Bama's playoff hopes in at least a little bit of danger. Oklahoma suffered its worst home loss since 2014. Michigan lost to Illinois for the first time since 2009. East Carolina became the first school of the season to fire its head coach.

We're just over two weeks away from the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season — obviously the only intense and important thing happening Nov. 5 — and everyone is a little fired up. But after a recent run of huge top-five matchups and wild results, what has actually changed? Critics of the expanded playoff talked a lot about how the regular season would be diminished in intensity and importance, and while the former has been laughably untrue, how much have 2024's upsets and big games actually shifted the odds when it comes to making the 12-team playoff or winning the national title? With Georgia's win over Texas officially giving us zero unbeaten SEC teams, now seems like as good a time as any to compare current odds to those from back when everyone was 0-0.

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Heading into the season, the Allstate Playoff Predictor gave seven teams at least a 40% chance of reaching the first 12-team CFP: Georgia, Oregon, Texas, Ohio State, Alabama, Penn State and Notre Dame. Those teams boasted a combined 76% chance of winning the