CFB Week 12: Top five losers from Saturday, Rough day for SEC West

Mississippi State and QB Dak Prescott fell back down to Earth as the Crimson Tide rolled over them on Saturday.

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Mississippi State, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn – that’s four of the SEC West’s (alleged) best ranked teams that all lost on Saturday (albeit two of them to other SEC West teams). Mississippi State lost to Alabama, LSU was the team Arkansas broke their SEC losing streak to, the Aggies got thrashed by the Missouri Tigers and Auburn suffered their second straight loss, this time to the Georgia Bulldogs.  This is the time of year where the war of attrition takes it toll on division rivals, but now the SEC West looks a lot less intimidating than it did only a few weeks ago.  If this keeps up, there may not even be a single team representing the SEC in the College Football Playoffs this year.

Here are the five biggest losers from Week 12 of college football:

Mississippi State – Losing to Alabama is forgiveable in the long run, but after their marquee opponents Texas A&M, LSU and Auburn all lost this past week, are they really impressive enough to earn a spot in the College Football Playoffs?

Arizona State – Losing to Oregon State – the last place team in the Pac-12 North – will surely end Arizona State’s chances at the College Football Playoffs, even if they do beat Oregon in the Pac-12 title game.

Notre Dame – The Fighting Irish have now lost three of their last four, and they haven’t always been close.  QB Everett Golson may be the biggest tease in college football: Incredible talent, but more turnover prone than any other QB that comes to mind.

Florida – The announcement already came that Will Muschamp will not be back after that crushing home loss.  On the bright side, Florida will undoubtedly attract the best candidates of any job in college football – who wouldn’t want to coach Florida in a very vulnerable SEC East?

TCU – Any time a team that scratched and clawed its way through the top competition in the Big XII finds itself down 10 in the third quarter against a team so bad it already fired its head coach, its rankings are going to suffer mightily. It’s already fallen in the AP polls. The College Football Playoff polls may be even less forgiving.