With two weeks left in the regular season, the playoff picture is coming into focus. At this point, the top six teams in the rankings seem like near locks. The ACC and the Group of 5 will supply champions, too, whether the Big Ten likes it or not. The winner of a Week 13 showdown between USC and Oregon should be on track for a bid, and it's hard to imagine, at this point, that Notre Dame is left out, given its No. 9 ranking with just lowly Syracuse and Stanford left on the schedule.

Add it all up, and that's 10 of the 12 playoff spots already written in -- well, if not in ink, at least a really dark pencil.

That leaves the teams still lurking on the periphery -- Alabama , Oklahoma , Utah , Vanderbilt , BYU and Miami , chief among them -- hoping each week that the co

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