Back in June, I shared one of my favorite ways of framing any sort of title race (national, conference, division, Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, etc.): by counting "ifs." How many conditional clauses do you need to turn a team into a contender? The fewer the better.
As far as the national title race was concerned, Alabama and Clemson had the fewest ifs, while other teams with decent title odds (via Las Vegas) required far more. Let's walk back through my summer ifs list, assess how each team has addressed its conditionals and see what it has to tell us about the national title race as a whole.