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College football is back, and even though no games have been played yet, we already have a sense of which teams have the best shot to make the fifth installment of the 4-team playoff at the end of the season.
We still don't know precisely how the committee picks the final four teams, but we have learned a few things over the years. We know they like the SEC and Alabama. We know they generally prefer conference champions if most other criteria are in the same ballpark. And we know they don't like to give bids to Pac-12 and Big 12 teams in the same year.
With what we have learned so far, we have some idea of what teams need to do to make the playoff. Below, we ranked the top 20 teams in the country based on their chances to make the playoff.