The newest set of College Football Playoff rankings gave us fresh answers … and plenty of fresh questions.
The top feels settled, the middle is a mess, the ACC is struggling for relevance, and, somehow, head-to-head results continue to get ignored by the selection committee.
Here are my takeaways from the latest College Football Playoff rankings.
1. Michigan still controls a route to the CFP
No. 1 Ohio State at No. 15 Michigan. It’s so good that they might play it twice.
The proof of this is that it looks even more likely, based on these rankings, that the Wolverines can win their way into the 12-team bracket with a fifth consecutive win against the Buckeyes.
It’s one of a handful of cleanly laid out paths for entry into the CFP, with the top three teams looking more and more like virtual locks for selection into the bracket. For top-ranked Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana and No. 3 Texas A&M, it’s just a matter of where they will be seeded following next weekend’s conference championships.
But then there’s this: The Wolverines have a path to not just play in the CFP, but face OSU for a second-straight week in the Big Ten title game. If Michigan beats Ohio State and Oregon and Indiana both lose, Michigan would play Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship.
2. Once again … the committee’s logic doesn’t match what happened on the field
For three weeks, we’ve watched this collection of suits ignore the fundamental truth of this game, best articulated in the form of a simple question: Did you beat your opponent or did you lose to your opponent?
The answer is binary — yes or no.
In college football, we respect winning more than any other sport on the planet. We crave undefeated teams only to argue about which undefeated team is better. And for more than 100 years, that was the best we could do. But now, when we can watch two teams line up and settle it on the field in real time, this committee has chosen — repeatedly — to ignore the one great arbiter of Who Is Better.
Notre Dame is not a better team than Miami.
Miami is a better team than Notre Dame.
We know this because they played each other at Hard Rock Stadium, and the Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish 27–24 on August 31.
Miami. Beat. Notre Dame.
“[They] have been in contrast this week,” CFP committee chairman and Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek stated, “however they’re in contrast in the identical pod with Alabama and a one-loss BYU, and the committee nonetheless feels that Notre Dame is an entire group and has been constant all through the season and deserves to be ranked the place they’re, at No. 9, forward of Alabama… after which Miami falls in accordingly.”
That’s a good distance of claiming: We don’t care concerning the scoreboard. We don’t care about information. We don’t care about actuality.
3. Win and also you’re in
Georgia, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Oregon and Alabama all be a part of Michigan as one- or two-loss groups that may win this weekend and really feel as relaxed as anybody can about their probabilities of making the CFP.
For Oklahoma, that’s the perfect end result. For the remaining, there are nonetheless situations in play that would ship them into their convention title video games with Saturday wins.
4. The choice committee would not appear to care concerning the ACC
What’s wild concerning the ACC is that none of its members have a practical path to the CFP as at-large groups.
Virginia and SMU have the only routes to the ACC title recreation: beat Virginia Tech and Cal, respectively, they usually’re in. However there are nonetheless quite a few situations through which these two — together with Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, Duke and even (or particularly) Miami — might attain the convention championship with the best mixture of losses elsewhere and the quirks of in-conference power of schedule.
If that sounds convoluted, it’s as a result of it’s. And there’s a greater manner.
It’s called a 24-team College Football Playoff.
RJ Young is a nationwide school soccer author and analyst for FOX Sports activities. Comply with him @RJ_Young.
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