Now it gets real.

With 2 weeks left in the regular season, there are Playoff paths that are within sight. “Win and get in” doesn’t apply to everyone anymore. Sure, automatic bids are at stake, but the 12-team Playoff has made for plenty of discourse among the potential at-large teams.

Here’s what the Playoff Poll looked like on Tuesday night:

Here are takeaways from the 3rd Playoff Poll of 2024:

Georgia got the biggest win of the weekend, but not the biggest boost

That sounds like a gripe. It’s not. Context is needed for why the Dawgs fell 9 spots to No. 12 after losing to Ole Miss, but then climbed just 2 spots to No. 10 after beating Tennessee.

Fellow 2-loss teams Alabama and Ole Miss both have the head-to-head against Georgia, and both also have multiple wins against the current CFP Top 25. Ergo, why Georgia’s ceiling was somewhat limited this week. So too, however, is UGA’s floor moving forward because even though it lacks the head-to-head against those teams, it has wins against No. 3 Texas, No. 11 Tennessee and No. 17 Clemson … all by double digits.

Speaking of Tennessee, the Vols fell 4 spots after losing to Georgia. They are now in the unenviable spot of looking up at 4 different SEC teams, 1 of which being fellow 2-loss Alabama … who lost to Tennessee. But because there’s not a clean way to rank 2-loss teams strictly based on head-to-head — you can’t apply that same logic elsewhere because Georgia has the head-to-head vs. Tennessee and Alabama beat Georgia — Tennessee’s résumé is in some trouble after the UGA loss.

The Vols could use a bit of chaos while Georgia is setting itself up for an at-large berth.

Miami is now slotted behind Alabama

Sneaky. Real sneaky.

Alabama played FCS Mercer, which is a slight upgrade from Miami’s bye week. Yet the selection committee moved the Tide from No. 10 to No. 7 while Miami moved from No. 9 to No. 8. How much of that was because the selection committee watched Miami’s best win, Louisville, suffer loss No. 4 and fall out of the CFP Top 25? It had to. Louisville is the only team that Miami beat that currently has a winning conference record.

Alabama, meanwhile, has 4 wins against teams in the current CFP Top 25. That felt like an acknowledgment of that to sneak the 2-loss Tide ahead of Miami. It’s even telling that the selection committee put Miami as a buffer between Alabama and fellow 2-loss SEC teams Ole Miss (No. 9), Georgia (No. 10) and Tennessee (No. 11).

If chalk plays out in the SEC, Alabama will face Texas in the conference championship game. Whether the selection committee would punish the battle-tested Tide remains to be seen.

Can we learn anything from BYU’s fall that can potentially be applied to Indiana?

I thought that was a good question for Rece Davis to ask at the top of the rankings show. BYU and Indiana have been 1 spot apart in the first 2 rankings. They both made a jump last week past Tennessee even though none of those 3 teams had a needle-mover victory.

So this week, it was interesting to see how far the Cougars would fall after a brutal home loss to Kansas. From No. 6 to No. 14 was how much the selection committee dinged BYU. Mind you, BYU is now 1 spot behind an SMU squad that it beat, albeit back in September. That means BYU is the lowest-ranked 1-loss Power Conference team.

Obviously, losing to Kansas at home is different than losing to Ohio State in Columbus. It’s not an exact comparison. But given how closely those résumés were valued, IU isn’t in position to assume anything if it gets blown out in Columbus.

Alternatively, think about this. Would the selection committee ever consider IU at No. 1 if it pulled off the upset? That’s something that nobody is talking about even though IU beating Ohio State in Columbus would be more impressive than Oregon doing so in Eugene. Yes, the Ducks have the deeper résumé because of the wins against No. 12 Boise State and No. 25 Illinois, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Saturday will mean everything for the Hoosiers.

Boise State getting a top-4 seed — if this ended today — is a truly wild thought

I hate doing the bracket reveal as the rankings are being announced. It’s unnecessarily confusing to the viewer. But it was noteworthy seeing in real time that by Boise State being ranked No. 12 ahead of projected Big 12 champ BYU (No. 14), it would get a first-round bye. That’s bananas.

If you had asked me in the preseason, I would’ve said it’s highly unlikely that we see a Group of 5 team even get to host a first-round Playoff game, much less get a bye. Boise State still has work to do to make that happen — don’t forget about the possibility of No. 19 Army getting a massive boost into the top 10 if it can upset No. 6 Notre Dame — but it speaks to how wild of a year it’s been.

We can sit here and debate if Boise State is being propped up too much because of how great Ashton Jeanty is and because the best thing on the résumé is a close loss at Oregon. Fair. That’s also the No. 1 team in America. Plus, beating a CFP Top 25 team like No. 24 UNLV helped, as did drubbing a Washington State team that sits at 8-2.

It’s incredible to think that a 1-loss Mountain West team is currently ranked ahead of 1-loss teams from the ACC (No. 13 SMU) and the Big 12 (No. 14 BYU). It remains to be seen what’ll happen if those teams win their conference title games.

For now, though, there’s no denying that Boise State has become one of the fascinating stories of the first 12-team Playoff.