It’s not something either fan base wants to digest this week, but one college football expert believes the loser of this week’s Alabama-Florida State game could still appear in the College Football Playoff.

With a hypothetical record of 11-2, Mike Tranghese, the former Big East commissioner and member of the CFP Selection Committee, told USA TODAY Sports that a two-loss scenario is an option.

“They’d get strong consideration,” Tranghese said.

The makeup of the four teams who are selected is among the hottest debates in college football.

Last year, Ohio State made it ahead of Big Ten champion Penn State, becoming the first team to make it without winning its conference.

In the short history of the CFP, there’s yet to be a team with more than one loss, and there has not been two teams from one conference in the four-team field. The question remains about the quality of the losses and if a conference champion would be considered given a two-loss record.

“It will happen, in my opinion,” Tranghese said. “They’re all gonna happen at some point. It’s the nature of the system.”

This season-opening matchup in Atlanta is a departure from the type of opponent for most other Power 5 schools, who largely play a non-conference game against a Football Championship Subdivision program. That’s one fallout of the change from the BCS to the CFP, Tranghese said. In the BCS era, playing a game of this magnitude was “almost suicide.”

“In my two years (as a selection committee member), it was obvious to me the collective will of the group was to reward people who played challenging schedules,” Tranghese said. “That’s the way they set up this Playoff. They reward people who challenge themselves with tough schedules.”