<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1RkKq7_0vxqek0B00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1RkKq7_0vxqek0B00" width="1920" height="1080" ></figure>COLUMBIA, Mo. — So who wants to talk about the playoffs?Probably not many folks in Missouri circles after the Tigers took a beating against Texas A&amp;M over the weekend and plummeted to No. 21 in the AP Top 25. Count coach Eli Drinkwitz among those who didn’t feel like doing any College Football Playoff pontificating after the defeat.“I’ve never even considered any of that stuff,” he said when asked about potentially needing to reassess his team’s goals for the 2024 season. “Like, we’re just trying to be 1-0 each week. Right now, we weren’t, and there’s a lot of reasons why. We got a lot of other things to worry about.”And that much is true. The reasons for Saturday’s game turning into an MU collapse are big-picture enough that they’ll determine whether 2024 becomes a year for the Tigers to remember or one to forget.Playoff talk will die down for a bit, even here in the pages of the Post-Dispatch — after this explanation of Mizzou’s chances at getting back in that race, of course. The privileges of contender status evaporated on a toasty October afternoon in College Station, Texas.The College Football Playoff Selection Committee’s first rankings of the season are still roughly a month away, so it’s impossible to guess at how that powerful group will view Mizzou — and there’s lots of football to be played before they weigh in. But landing in the 20s of any ranking won’t be good enough for MU to crack a 12-team field, to say the least. Making a bracket today out of the AP Poll would have five Southeastern Conference teams in but no Mizzou.Through six weeks of the college football season and five games for Missouri, the Tigers have a 10.6% chance of making the CFP, according to ESPN’s prediction model. There are 27 programs that the algorithm thinks are more likely to make it into the 12-team bracket.Among the teams with a stronger presence of the contender gene than MU are Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas A&amp;M and Oklahoma from the SEC — plus UNLV, led by former Missouri coach Barry Odom.Those low chances of making the CFP are down dramatically from the 40.1% chance that ESPN’s model gave Mizzou after its Sept. 21 win over Vanderbilt, which at the time was the 10th-best chance of any team in the nation.Sportsbooks also dinged Missouri’s chances, though to a lesser degree. Fanduel has MU to make the CFP at +320 ($10 bet pays out $42), which is implied odds of 23.81%. DraftKings is more pessimistic at +500 ($10 to pay out $60), which implies a 16.67% chance.The precision of the numbers doesn’t matter a whole lot at the current moment: The bottom line is that Mizzou’s loss puts a significant dent in its playoff bid, but it’s not a fatal blow.Back after the Vanderbilt escape, ESPN’s model suggested that MU would have a 77% chance of getting in if it could win just one of its key SEC road games: at Texas A&amp;M, at Alabama and at South Carolina.One of those opportunities is of course gone. The past view of Missouri would suggest that it should win against the Gamecocks on Nov. 16, but there’s likely more cynicism around that game now. There’s more to wonder about with Alabama.Few teams have experienced as much whiplash in results as the Crimson Tide, which went from beating then-No. 2 Georgia to losing against Vanderbilt. Bama is still a very talented top 10 team — and Tuscaloosa is still a very difficult place to play — but had Mizzou not stumbled over the weekend, the game between the Tigers and Tide at the end of this month would’ve looked more interesting.That the weekend saw so much chaos at the top of the college football landscape could play to Missouri’s favor in making the CFP. There’s only one SEC team that is still undefeated. The Big Ten — the SEC’s primary competition for at-large spots in the playoff field — has four, but that number will drop as they play each other and tarnish records.A minimal number of undefeated teams means more will finish at 11-1 or 10-2, which are now the best-case scenarios for Missouri.The Tigers will also need to climb back up in reputation after a dodgy overtime win and a blowout loss, but that will take time. Wins against 1-5 Massachusetts and 2-4 Auburn won’t do much toward that — though a loss to either would probably can playoff talk for good.Serious discussion of Mizzou as a possible playoff team won’t come back into vogue until, maybe, that Oct. 26 game at Alabama, when the stakes get a little bit higher once again.For the next few weeks, the talk around the Tigers won’t have the postseason in mind.Hochman: With Mizzou now No. 21, can Brady Cook flip his year, keep Tigers on playoff prowl?</div></body>

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Are Mizzou's College Football Playoff hopes gone after loss to Texas A&M?

COLUMBIA, Mo. — So who wants to talk about the playoffs?. Probably not many folks in Missouri circles after the Tigers took a beating against Texas A&M over the weekend and plummeted to No. 21 in the AP Top 25. Count coach Eli Drinkwitz among those who didn’t feel like doing any College Football Playoff pontificating after the defeat.

Are Mizzou's College Football Playoff hopes gone after loss to Texas A&M?

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