With three games left in the season, Mississippi State University’s football season can go a lot of ways. There are a few different scenarios that can play out.
Scenario one is the easiest to explain, but will be the hardest to pull off. If MSU wins out, it will be in the SEC championship game. Win that, and a spot in the College Football Playoff will be a lock. According to the current College Football Playoff ranking, the Bulldogs are No. 1 in the country, so win out and there is nothing to worry about.
Scenario two gets a little bit dicier. If MSU loses in Tuscaloosa or falls to rival Ole Miss, the road to Atlanta and to the playoffs becomes tougher to predict. According to a tweet from Joe Schad, MSU has a 95 percent chance of losing at least one of the next three games. The most likely of the three would be to  Alabama. The Bulldogs would need to beat Ole Miss and have Alabama lose to Auburn if they would hope to make the SEC Championship. This would not kill the Bulldogs’ chances to make the playoffs. Having only one loss to a top-five team in the country would not look too bad. Florida State is the only one other undefeated team in the AP Top 25, so MSU would be comparing its one loss to the other teams vying for the remaining three spots.Three wins against teams in the top-10 in the country at the time would still make for a formable resume. It would ultimately come down to whether or not the selection committee would allow two teams from the same division, let alone the same conference, into the College Football Playoff.
A win at Alabama and a loss to Ole Miss would make it even more difficult to predict what might happen to the Bulldogs. Assumingly, MSU would without question be in the SEC Championship, (assuming MSU takes care of business against Vanderbilt) and have to beat the SEC East Champion for a chance to make the College Football Playoff.
The loss to the Rebels would look worse than a loss to the Crimson Tide, but if MSU were to pull out an extra win over the SEC East Champion then MSU would probably be in a very good position to make the final four as well. 
If MSU loses to Vanderbilt it would make it very difficult to make it to the College Football Playoff at all. It is not likely the team will lose, but if it was to lose, that would seemingly be too bad a loss to overcome to make the College Football Playoff. However, wins against Alabama and Ole Miss would still send MSU to the SEC Championship.
A two-loss MSU team would more than likely fail to make the playoffs and would fall into a tiebreaker that would probably not end in the Bulldogs’ favor to make the SEC Championship. The two losses would send the Bulldogs out of contention of those two opportunities. However a 10-2 record would still make this one of the best seasons in Bulldog history.