Halloween may have passed two weeks ago, but here’s a scary thought for you SEC fans out there — There is a very realistic chance the SEC is shut out of the four-team College Football Playoff this winter due to a two-loss conference champion.

I’m not saying it will happen, or even that I think it will happen. But what I am saying is that the possibility of a two-loss conference champ is very real, and that SEC fans should begin bracing for the season to end with the worst-case scenario for the conference.

Can you imagine, amidst all the talk of “SEC bias” this season, if the conference was left out of the playoff field entirely?

Chaos would ensue. Twitter would be overrun by angry SEC fans and ecstatic fans from every other conference. The new playoff would bring about the same controversy the old BCS once did.

It would be pandemonium across the college football universe, and it’s all very possible.

Only two SEC teams can claim one or fewer losses 11 weeks into the season — Alabama and Mississippi State. Those two teams happen to play this weekend, and if Alabama wins the possibility of a two-loss conference champ becomes even more likely.

Here’s all that would need to happen for the SEC to end the year with a two-loss champion:

  • Week 12 (Nov. 15): Alabama beats Mississippi State in Tuscaloosa.
  • Week 14 (Nov. 29): Auburn beats Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ole Miss beats Mississippi State in Oxford.

Considering all four of the teams referenced above are included in the top 10 of this week’s College Football Playoff rankings, it’s hard to say any of those results would be considered an upset. It’s not like the worst-case scenario requires a team like Vanderbilt to take down Mississippi State; it simply entails top 10 teams beating other top 10 teams. There’s nothing revolutionary about that concept.

It’s become clear a two-loss team from any conference won’t make the playoff field unless there are three or fewer one-loss teams left at season’s end. Thus, if the SEC champion has two losses, the conference would need a handful of other teams to lose again to keep its national title hopes alive.

That’s not likely to happen, meaning a two-loss SEC champ would mark another title-less year in the conference.

Now let’s say Mississippi State wins this weekend to remain undefeated. You’d think at that point the SEC would be in the clear, right? Wrong.

Even if Mississippi State wins this weekend, clinching the SEC West crown and eliminating Alabama from title contention, it’s still no guarantee the Bulldogs can get to the finish line with fewer than two losses.

They play Vanderbilt the following week and would likely improve to 11-0, but still end the season against a top 10 Ole Miss team before entering the SEC championship game against either Missouri, Georgia or Florida. If an 11-0 State team lost to the Rebels and then lost again in the conference title game, the SEC would once again find itself out of the playoff picture.

This scenario is less likely than the first scenario we discussed, but it is far from unrealistic.

Numbers never lie, and right now the numbers say the SEC is the best conference in the country. It has the most ranked teams of any conference, and its 43-3 record in non-conference games is second-to-none.

However, the number “2” doesn’t lie either, as in the number of losses it takes to be eliminated from playoff contention. Even if those losses come to top 10 teams, they’re losses nonetheless.

The SEC has a lot of games remaining between top 10 teams, and if the results shake out the wrong way, all 14 teams in the conference will watch this year’s playoff from their dorm rooms.

A two-loss SEC champion is more realistic than you think. Prepare accordingly.