Georgia, Texas and College Football Playoff madness in Week 14.

By early fall, it was clear that the growth of the College Football Playoff from four teams to 12 would make this season unlike any other. It was less clear that things would get this weird.

Triple the size of the field for the sport’s biggest postseason event, and more teams will be playing nationally significant football deeper into the year. Ideally, this would not be necessary; people seemed to like regular bowl games until the mid-2010s, when ESPN’s coverage of the sport became so intense about the new playoff system that many players stopped caring about non-playoff bowls. But the toothpaste wasn’t going back in the tube, and in a playoff-centric world, the way to add more meaning to the sport (and more TV dollars for the biggest conferences) was to add more playoffs to the playoffs.

But with one week left in the regular season, things are a lot messier than even most of us predicted when we mapped out what a 12-team playoff campaign would look like. The dawn of 16- or 18-team super conferences has made league championship races a mess, leaving a bizarre array of potential playoff scenarios on the table with just one full week (plus conference championship games after that) to go. More things could still happen than have ever been able to happen in college football, and as dumb as you might think it could get, it could get dumber.

A few conferences have simple images. Exactly four Big Ten teams are almost certain to make the field: Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana. The Hoosiers, 10–1, looked briefly in trouble when they dispatched Ohio State on Saturday, but a brigade of Southeastern Conference teams dropped their third game of the season later that day and provided a cushion. As long as Indiana doesn’t mess with 1-10 Purdue, the worst team in the Power Four conferences, the Hoosiers will be fine. Meanwhile, the ACC will send either SMU, Miami or Clemson to the playoffs, with some chance the league will get another bid if Clemson wins this week against South Carolina but misses out on the ACC Championship. Meanwhile, the Pac-12, Mid-American and Conference USA will not send anyone to the playoffs.

Elsewhere, it’s a beautiful mess as far as the eye can see.

The Big 12 is the piece de resistance in the College Football Playoff variety. This league now has 16 schools in it, and about nine of them have pretty close to the same caliber of football teams. These nine are all within a game of the standings, and it is possible that as many as eight of them finish the weekend with matching records. All nine still have at least a distant path to the conference championship game next weekend in North Texas, and the Big 12 says that 256 combinations of opponents and seeds remain in play for that matchup. Arizona State (against rival Arizona this week) and Iowa State (against a tough Kansas State) have the closest control over their own destiny, but could miss out on complex tiebreakers, according to the league, even if both win this week.

Baylor and West Virginia fans have spent much of the last two years clamoring to fire their current head coaches, but neither is technically dead yet in the Big 12 race. Nor does Texas Tech, whose continued presence in the race allows the newspapers in Lubbock, Texas, to sell some information and hope to Red Raiders fans: “Texas Tech football can still reach the Big 12 championship game. Here are the scenarios.” That would be cool since Texas Tech has never reached the game.

The race in the SEC, the sport’s best league, also happens a lot. Georgia has clinched a spot in the championship game, and either Texas or Texas A&M (whoever wins their rekindled rivalry Saturday night at A&M) will join them. The battle for the championship game is simple enough, then, but SEC fans have been filled with questions over the past few days about what happens next. Last year, Georgia was the No. 1 in America throughout the regular season, but lost its playoff spot when it lost the first game of the year in the SEC Championship against Alabama. No one has any real idea how the playoff selection committee will punish conference championship losers in a 12-team bracket, making things uncomfortable for many fans with vested interests in the SEC race. At least four teams from the league should make the field, but no one — not even Georgia, with its ticket already punched to the conference title game — knows with absolute certainty that it will make it.

There are several big questions during the SEC vote. Tennessee will make the playoff if it beats Vanderbilt in Nashville this weekend, but if not, it will join a jumble of three-loss SEC teams the committee must pick through. South Carolina has charged hard late in the season and has risen to No. 15 with an 8–3 record, and that power jump in the field if it wins at no. 12 Clemson on Saturday. But what to do with no. 14 Ole Miss, who appears to have the same record as the Gamecocks and also beat them 27–3 earlier in the season? Ole Miss is likely out of the playoff picture because it plays lousy Mississippi State this week, and beating a team that’s going winless in SEC play shouldn’t help the Rebels jump anyone. But could Ole Miss’ presence sway the committee to keep South Carolina out? The situation is so awkward that it is difficult to predict. Overall, Alabama ranks No. 13, ahead of both the Rebels and Gamecocks, with three losses of its own and a date this weekend with a sub-.500 Auburn team. Alabama also has a win over South Carolina.

Meanwhile, the 12-team playoff reserves a spot for at least one (and most have figured, accurate a) teams from the nonpower conferences, also known as the Group of 5. (That’s everyone outside of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12.) The Mountain West’s Boise State has the inside track record of 10–1 and is thus far ahead of the entire Big 12 , setting up the Broncos to get a bye week in the first round of the playoffs, while whoever wins the Big 12 will have to slip with some SEC or Big Ten team. The Big 12’s commissioner, Brett Yormark, is already knocking on the table about why it wouldn’t be right, but it won’t be up to him. Meanwhile, there’s a chance the Big 12 produces a three-loss champion. In that case, it’s highly unlikely, but not entirely impossible, that the Big 12 misses the playoffs entirely. It would take Boise State staying on track behind the nation’s top running back, Ashton Jeanty, and the selection committee to settle for falling to an AAC champion Army team with a loss at just the right time.

Or Tulane and Boise State could both miss out and the group of 5 playoff spots could either go to Army – which is 9-1 but just lost by a billion points to Notre Dame, a likely playoff team. Orif Army lost this weekend and then beat Tulane in the American Athletic title game, the non-power playoff spot might go to the Mountain West’s UNLV (which would have to beat Boise State) or, to get even crazier, Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns from the Sun Belt. Those are remote possibilities but real, a testament to how many things are still on the table as the season winds down.

As it stands, I estimate that 28 teams have a better than 0 percent chance of making the playoffs. Maybe I should say 28.5 if the committee reconsiders Ole Miss in the big pile of three-loss SEC teams. Last year at the same time, the number of candidates remaining was eight. Tripling the size of the bracket has more than tripled the number of quasi-competitors. Most have no chance beyond a rounding error to actually win the tournament. The eventual winner will be Oregon, Texas, Ohio State or Georgia. But the most fun you can have with college football isn’t asking the question, “Who’s the best team?” It asks something more fundamental that fans of multiple teams can get behind: “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”