We're still over a month away from Selection Day for the new, 12-team College Football Playoff. But there is still time for dark horse candidates to force their way into the proceedings. 

In this week's Betting Life podcast, Thor Nystrom broke down his top CFP dark horses to consider betting on now.

SMU Mustangs (+200) & Pitt Panthers (+500)

Let's start with these two because, of course, they face off this weekend. SMU is a 7.5-point favorite, but there are questions about quarterback availability on both sides. So how do you approach these two teams? 

It looks like we're going to get Kevin Jennings on the SMU side, and Pitt has essentially confirmed that Eli Holstein will be available for this game. That is enormous for Pitt. They could not afford to have Eli Holstein out for this game — he's the Alabama transfer. 

Their new offensive coordinator, Kade Bell, has spurred a turnaround of the Pitt program, currently undefeated of course. And the winner of this game, their odds are going to get slashed next week. 

So depending on which one it is, if you like a side in this game, I would suggest dabbling a quarter unit or just take a quarter unit from your bet and put it on that team's playoff odds. Because, again, you're going to want that ticket next week. 

But these are two of the dark horse teams at the top of my list to make the College Football Playoff: SMU at 2:1 and Pitt at 5:1. The winner of this one is going to shoot to the top of that list and will be live in the wild card chase. 

And, of course, both these teams are also live to make the ACC title game. In that wide-open ACC, is Miami unbeatable? I don't think so. Is Clemson unbeatable? Certainly not so. If one of these teams gets in, there's a potential to steal a bid by winning the conference outright. But these are good odds on both those teams.

Army Black Knights (+800), Tulane Green Wave (+1000) & UNLV Rebels (+2000)

Army is not the flavor of the day in the G5 — that would be Boise State. We talked about it on last week's episode when they were playing UNLV. And Boise won that one and moved into the prohibitive favorite status. 

But keep in mind that Boise State still needs to finish out this season unscathed. Then they probably need to beat UNLV again in the conference title game. They certainly could do it, but we're five wins away from that. Boise State has already suffered their loss against Oregon. I don't know that they can afford another one. 

So Army at 8:1, I feel like there's potential value right now. You will put them right at No. 2 in the G5 pecking order right now. And then going a little bit deeper than that, Tulane still has a shot to win out as well. 

They're going to need a little chaos above them, but not much — they basically just need Boise State to lose, and then to win out. And then they would bypass Army and jump to the top of that packing order. They both just need that loss for Boise State.

Speaking of losses to Boise State, everyone wrote the obituary for UNLV on Friday night when Boise State came back in the fourth quarter and won that game. But UNLV is now at 20:1 to make the playoff — if they win out, that would entail beating Boise, and all of a sudden you're potentially back in it. 

They're going to need a little help, too. But we assume that Army is going to lose to Notre Dame. If it was two-loss UNLV against one-loss Army, how would the committee see that? 

There are still some things up in the air, but I think UNLV still has a path if they win out and get just a little bit of help.