By the start of the fall, it was clear that the growth of the College Football Playoff from four to 12 teams would make this season unlike any other. It was less clear that it was going to be this weird.

Triple the size of the field for the sport’s biggest postseason event, and more teams will play nationally meaningful football deeper into the year. Ideally this would not be necessary; People seemed to love regular bowl games just fine until the mid-2010s, when ESPN’s coverage of the sport became so intense over the new playoff system and many players stopped caring about non-playoff bowls. But the toothpaste didn’t go back in the tube, and in a playoff-oriented world, the way to give the sport more meaning (and more television dollars for the biggest conferences) was to add more playoffs to the playoffs .

But with a week left in the regular season, things are a lot messier than even most of us predicted when we mapped out what a 12-team playoff campaign would look like. The dawn of 16- or 18-team superconferences has thrown league championships into chaos, leaving a bizarre array of potential playoff scenarios on the table with only one full week (plus the conference championship games after that) to go. More things can still happen than ever before in college football, and no matter how crazy you think it can get, it can get even crazier.

A few conferences have simple images. Exactly four Big Ten teams will almost certainly make the field: Oregon, Ohio State, Penn State and Indiana. The Hoosiers, 10-1, briefly appeared to be in trouble when they were routed at Ohio State last Saturday, but a brigade of Southeastern Conference teams lost their third game of the season later that day, causing some buffer. As long as Indiana doesn’t play 1-10 Purdue, the worst team in the Power Four conferences, the Hoosiers will be fine. Meanwhile, the ACC will send SMU, Miami or Clemson to the playoffs, with some chance the league will get a second bid if Clemson beats South Carolina this week but misses the ACC Championship. Meanwhile, the Pac-12, Mid-American and Conference USA won’t send anyone to the playoffs.

Elsewhere it’s a beautiful mess as far as the eye can see.

The Big 12 is the pièce de résistance of the College Football Playoff variance. This league now has sixteen schools, and roughly nine of them have a football team of almost the same caliber. Those nine are all within one game of the standings, and it’s possible as many as eight of them end the weekend with matching records. All nine still have at least a remote path to making it to the conference championship game in North Texas next weekend, and the Big 12 says that 256 opponent and seed combinations remain in play for that matchup. Arizona State (facing rival Arizona this week) and Iowa State (facing rival Arizona this week) and Iowa State (facing rival Arizona) are the closest to controlling their own destiny, but could miss complex tiebreakers even if, according to the league win both this week.

Baylor and West Virginia fans have made many calls for their current head coaches to be fired over the past two years, but neither is technically dead in the Big 12 race yet. Neither does Texas Tech, whose continued presence in the race allows Lubbock, Texas newspapers to sell a little information and hope to Red Raiders fans: “Texas Tech football can still make the Big 12 championship game. Here are the scenarios.” This would be cool considering Texas Tech has never reached the game.

There’s also a lot to do during the race in the SEC, the sport’s top competition. Georgia has clinched one spot in the championship game, and Texas or Texas A&M (whoever wins their reignited rivalry at A&M on Saturday night) will join them. So the championship game matchup is simple enough, but SEC fans have been haunted in recent days with questions about what happens next. Last year, Georgia was the No. 1 team in America during the regular season, but lost its playoff spot when it lost its first game of the year in the SEC Championship to Alabama. No one has any idea how the playoff selection committee will punish the conference championship losers in a group of twelve teams, and so things have become awkward for many fans with vested interests in the SEC race. At least four teams from the league should make the field, but no one — not even Georgia, which already has a ticket to the conference title game — knows with absolute certainty that the country will make it.

There are even more big questions surrounding the SEC vote. Tennessee will make the playoff if it beats Vanderbilt in Nashville this weekend, but if not, it will join a tangle of SEC teams with three losses for the committee to sort through. South Carolina made a tough push late in the season, rising to No. 15 with an 8-3 record, and it succeeded. power jump into the field if it wins at No. 12 Clemson on Saturday. But what about No. 14 Ole Miss, who will likely have the same record as the Gamecocks and also beat them 27-3 earlier this season? Ole Miss is likely out of the playoff race because it plays miserable Mississippi State this week, and beating a team that’s going winless in SEC play shouldn’t help the Rebels skip anyone. But could Ole Miss’ presence help the committee keep South Carolina out? The situation is so difficult that it is difficult to predict. Compounding this, Alabama is ranked No. 13, ahead of both the Rebels and Gamecocks, with three losses of its own and a date this weekend with a sub-.500 Auburn team. Alabama also has a win over South Carolina.

Meanwhile, the 12-team playoff reserves a spot for at least one (and, as most thought, precisely one) team from the non-power conferences, also known as the Group of 5. (That’s everyone outside of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12.) The Boise State in Mountain West has the inside track at 10-1 and has so far ahead of the entire Big 12, giving the Broncos a bye week in the first round of the playoff, while whoever wins the Big 12 will have to beat a pair of SEC or Big Ten teams. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark is already asking why that wouldn’t be right, but that’s not up to him. Meanwhile, there’s a zero chance of the Big 12 producing a champion with three losses. In that case, it’s highly unlikely, but not entirely impossible, that the Big 12 misses the playoffs altogether. It would take Boise State staying on track behind the nation’s top running back, Ashton Jeanty, and the selection committee to fall to an Army AAC champion with one loss at just the right time.

Or Tulane and Boise State could both miss, and the Group 5 playoff spot could go to Army — which is 9-1, but just lost by a billion points to Notre Dame, a likely playoff team. OrIf Army were to lose this weekend and then beat Tulane in the American Athletic title game, the non-power playoff spot might go to the Mountain West’s UNLV (which Boise State would have to beat) or, even crazier become, the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns of the Sun Belt. These are remote but real possibilities, a testament to how many things are still on the table as the season comes to a close.

As it stands now, I estimate that 28 teams have a greater than 0 percent chance of making the playoffs. Maybe I should say 28.5, just in case the committee reconsiders Ole Miss in the big pile of three-loss SEC teams. This time last year, the number of remaining contenders was eight. By tripling the size of the bracket, the number of quasi-candidates has more than tripled. Most have no chance of actually winning the tournament other than a rounding error. The ultimate winner will be Oregon, Texas, Ohio State or Georgia. But the most fun you can have with college football isn’t asking the question, “Who’s the best team?” It asks something more fundamental, that fans of more teams can get behind: “So you’re telling me there’s one chance?”