The Ohio State football team held at the No. 3 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings, but a few shakeups around college football affected the top four spots. Notre Dame now fills the spot, and if the playoff were to begin today, they would play Clemson in a rematch of earlier this season. Besides Alabama and Notre Dame standing in their way, there’s also one-loss Stanford at number 7.
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At this time a year ago, the SEC had three teams in the top five.
The only Big 12 team that could possibly make the playoff with a loss is Oklahoma, which already fell to Texas on October 10.
There are still three weeks of the regular season remaining, plus another week for conference championship games. Baylor still has to play one-loss TCU. Things could get quite complicated with a lot of big head to heads left in November, which means parity actually hurting the conference. The Tide (8-1) is home this Saturday to play No. 17 Mississippi State (7-2). The highest ranked conference champion from the Group of 5 conferences (American, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West and Sun Belt) also will receive a spot.
Notre Dame won’t have a chance to impress the Committee much the next two weekends with their opponents.
Meanwhile, it’s pretty hard to imagine the committee keeping Baylor out of the playoff if it beats Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and TCU down the stretch. Or the Irish faithful might say, you can’t leave us out we are Notre Dame. But the Jayhawks are 45-point underdogs going to Fort Worth, where the Horned Frogs (8-1, 5-1) are looking to bounce back from their first loss to stay in contention for their second consecutive Big 12 title. But the Cardinal now have golden opportunities to prove worthy of the biggest prizes this season – and they’ll have to survive a nationally hyped showdown two nights after Thanksgiving.
ESPN’s Football Power Index has Baylor as the second-best team in FBS (formerly Division I-A) and Notre Dame all the way down at No. 9. Neither Notre Dame nor the Big 12 play one. The Fighting Irish have overcome injuries and a tough schedule this season, coming a two-point conversion away from knocking off top-ranked Clemson on the road. MI and Iowa both jumped up in the rankings to No. 14 and 5, respectively. TCU has won 11 home games in a row, though its school-record 16-game winning streak ended with a loss at Oklahoma State. Houston would be the team with the best chance right now to get a chance at New Year’s Six Bowl.
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We’ll have our weekly rundown of all the games that impact the playoff race later this week as well to get everyone prepared for this weekend’s games and do the research behind what’s in Notre Dame’s best interest so you don’t have to.
