But of course, there is still plenty of football to be played.
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Following a 60-40 win this past Friday at SMU, Temple stayed steady at No. 22 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings released Tuesday night.
“Five through eight was where we spent the majority of our time debating, discussing and voting”, committee chairman and Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long said.
Overall, the feeling toward the Big 12 was that of disrespect again, and these rankings did little to quiet the chatter of the league getting left out of the Playoff for a second straight season. MI State, which was No. 7, lost at Nebraska and dropped to No. 13. The Hawkeyes jumped past Baylor (8-0), which remained at No. 6 despite a 31-24 win over Kansas State last Thursday. Iowa beat both the Wildcats and Badgers on the road this year.
But all of that still might not be enough to get by a Notre Dame team that wins out (which would include an impressive road game at Stanford to close this month).
Clemson wins out. Ohio State or Iowa wins out, and impresses by beating MI and/or MI State soundly.
Clemson (9-0) strengthened its hold on the top spot with a 23-13 victory against Florida State at home Saturday. TCU needs to win the rest of their games and hope that Ole Miss wins the SEC, and Notre Dame loses to Stanford, both of which are very real possibilities.
– TCU took a hard hit from its first loss at unbeaten Oklahoma State. That’s why the idea that the Irish are in with three more wins seems flawed. “I know our fan base is disappointed”, LSU coach Les Miles said at his press conference Monday concerning the Alabama loss. In this scenario, Florida’s best win (Alabama) would be better than Notre Dame’s best, but it would add only a win over Florida State to that, and its worst win probably came by a single score over either East Carolina or Vanderbilt. Oklahoma State; 9. LSU; 10.
The “other things” might include, you can’t leave the SEC out of the playoffs our conference is just too strong. The National Championship Game takes place on January 11th in Glendale, Arizona.
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A team that continues to get no respect by the committee, even dating back to a year ago, is Baylor, who remained at number six in the rankings. Kirk Ferentz’s team is one of the top teams in strength of record and has played solid football every game this season. This would also spell doom for the ACC as a whole, as there is no other team in position to make a push for the CFP. “They’re not a flashy team, but they are consistent”. Suddenly, the Cowboys might not get as big of bump as they did against TCU. This would mark the second year in a row that the Big 12 would be shut out. However, watching Iowa get blown out in the opening round while a team like Alabama watches at home defeats the objective of the College Football Playoff system. If JT Barrett starts consistently producing on offense in the next coming weeks, it may silence a few doubters. Notre Dame is sitting pretty right now at #4.
