I went for a lot of upsets and it took a miracle in the Arkansas game to get me over.
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Taking a step down the ladder this week are the #4 Ohio State Buckeyes. So all three of these teams would be clear favorites to make the playoff. The win over Notre Dame is great but there’s not too much meat on it otherwise. The Sooners have a Colt McCoy Jr.in Baker Mayfield and control their own fate with TCU and Oklahoma State coming.
#11 Florida (9-1) 24 SC (3-7) 14: Treon Harris did a poor job at quarterback and Florida never really got their offense going, but their defense did a good enough job to make sure that if the Gators win the SEC championship game, they’ll be in the playoffs. Notre Dame’s best late season win would be over Stanford to close out the season. Couple Oklahoma’s 8-1 Big 12 record with a pretty solid out of conference road win over likely 8-4 Tennessee and that resume is better than Notre Dame’s.
10-0 – undoubtedly would raise its hand in protest at being leapfrogged by another one-loss team. At least that’s what they did a year ago when they took Ohio State over Baylor and TCU despite the fact that both Baylor and TCU had infinitely better road losses than Ohio State’s home loss to 6-6 Virginia Tech.
Consensus: Out. Iowa struggled in its win over Minnesota and wasn’t convincing enough to surpass Notre Dame. If they are up against Temple for this spot, I don’t know if it’s a guarantee that it goes to the Owls. After this past Saturday’s matchups, we’d be looking at a Clemson vs. Alabama national title game. If North Carolina wants in the Playoff, it’ll have to get in on the eye test. The Tar Heels have been bludgeoning teams recently, and if they continue that, maybe they’ll have a chance. The Cardinal will host OR and California the next two weeks before its showdown with Notre Dame. The Bulls need to win their final two games and Temple needs to lose one of its two contests to send USF to the championship game. That result would still be a major boost to Notre Dame’s resume, even though Stanford will get dinged for this loss to the Ducks. While a number of high-profile teams fell out of contention, Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame all won their contests this past Saturday. They have put up 60+ points in three separate games this year.
Jumping six spots in the rankings, #7 Oklahoma beat Baylor 44-34 giving the Bears their first loss on the year. Iowa would score a win over Ohio State.
Maryland (2-8) 7 #13 MI State (9-1) 28: Connor Cook is now injured, which puts this win in a different perspective, making it another rough weekend.
Probably not. The 12 teams we ranked above would all still have better resumes than any two loss team other than MI.
The demise of the Pac-12’s playoff hopes was a tragedy in two acts.
Again, it’s hard to conceive of a scenario where any team is in the playoff and not listed as one of the top 12 teams above. Well, their resume says they completely deserve it. The computers added Arkansas as a top-25 team, but seven top-40 wins is ridiculous. The first three teams are probably a consensus, the only real decision will come down to the fourth team. The Irish shouldn’t move out of the top four this week, and if they beat Boston College at Fenway Park like they should, they’ll get one final chance to impress the committee at No. 7 Stanford.
~ The Big 12’s #2 and #3 teams face off at Waco.
In the other marquee matchup in the Big 12, the other two contenders meet up in Norman. And, I’ll point out, McCaffery has nearly identical numbers at this point in the season that Reggie Bush had in his (vacated) Heisman season. The ACC is really all-in with Clemson now that FSU has a pair of losses. Meantime the Pac 12 had a sea of upsets. I think they’ve gotten stuck in the same type of mud that many defending champs deal with.
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Good luck with this.
