Let me preface this column by saying I’m very much a legitimate fan of Missouri football. I’ve been listening to Mike Kelly call Mizzou football since the Corby Jones days. I have been to at least one game a year since grade school. One of my favorite memories of high school is stealing three beers from a tailgate following the Oklahoma game my junior year (wow, was that an adrenaline rush).

It’s because of my fanhood that I feel comfortable writing that this year’s team is not a great team.

I do like this team. I think that it has done a nice job of finding wins despite the fact it simply doesn’t have the offensive talent it did last year. The Tigers are an above average team, even a _good_ team, with talented players on both sides of the ball and with (as usual) a knack for causing turnovers. It is a privilege to watch junior defensive end Shane Ray terrify quarterbacks every Saturday.

Missouri had a good win (South Carolina), and a _bad_ loss (Indiana). The Tigers got embarrassed at home by a vengeful Georgia team and promptly responded with a dominating defensive performance against Florida in The Swamp. These are things that a good team does: It has a hiccup or two over the course of the season and it responds with wins.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about how the season is going to play out. I made that mistake in an earlier column before the Indiana game, but there’s a strong possibility the Tigers end the season with a 10-2 mark. Their remaining opponents —Tennessee, Texas A&M and Arkansas — have a combined four conference wins. Mizzou was lucky enough to be put in the Southeastern Conference Eastern division by some sort of geographical ignorance. The SEC East is by _far_ the weaker of the two divisions, and this year is no different with Mizzou currently in first place with a 4-1 conference record.

Now I’m about to unleash one helluva a hypothetical, but _if_ the Tigers finish the season at 10-2, they’ll win the SEC East and will play in the SEC title game. And _if_ the Tigers can win that game (a game I acknowledge that they’ll be significant underdogs in), then…?

Can the College Football Playoff be a legitimate playoff without the SEC champion represented?

It’d be one thing if we still had to put up with the BS that was the Bowl Championship Subdivision, where a team with two losses had virtually no chance of making to the title game (save for the 2007 LSU team). But with the four-team playoff, _if_ there were one team that could sneak its way in it with two losses, it would have to be the SEC champion.

This “good” Tigers team could potentially be one win away from a shot at the national championship for the second year in a row. The Tigers will have to take care of business against those three lesser opponents first. _If_ they do, though, I hope to see you in Atlanta to watch our Tigers play for the opportunity to be a part of the first College Football Playoff.