The top five teams in the ranking released Tuesday were unchanged.
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North Carolina (11-1): First off, it’s hard to see the Tar Heels beating Clemson on Saturday. The Cardinal play No. 20 USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game and a win plus a loss among the top four could move Stanford in the playoff semifinal mix as a coveted conference champion. This is a team that should be a top 10 squad for the 2016 season.
Yet intrigue is still afoot.
Stanford (10-2, 8-1 Pac 12) could sneak into the playoff if it wins the Pac 12 and either Clemson or Alabama loses. After all, anything goes in a college football rivalry game.
The Allstate Sugar Bowl is guaranteed the Big 12 champ, but since No. 3 Oklahoma is in the semifinal, the Sugar Bowl would get the team that finishes second in the Big 12 standings. Now, why I would put them in if Alabama or Clemson lose, is they have a schedule featuring 12 Power-5 schools, and would have 8 wins against bowl teams.
“Talkers talk and players play”, Stanford Coach David Shaw said. All have serious enough faults to preclude them from playing for the national title. “If it’s not, fine”. That fact hindered the league previous year when two of its contenders, Baylor and TCU, watched Ohio State leapfrog them to the coveted No. 4 spot on the steam of a 59-0 win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game on the eve of the final rankings.
North Carolina lost to 3-9 SC on opening night and two of its victories are over North Carolina A&T and Delaware. “It’s never just one thing, there are multiple things in there that have held UNC back”.
Unless chaos reigns this weekend and the Buckeyes get to the playoff, the best-case scenario for Ohio State in Herbstreit’s mind is the Buckeyes earning an invitation to the Rose Bowl.
The Cardinal would have a decisive edge over North Carolina in strength of schedule, and it would have a decisive edge over Ohio State as conference champion against a division runner-up. In addition, by raising Oklahoma to the top spot this week, the committee allows for any order of teams in the final week, after the remaining Conference Champions are crowned. Whether they are still there when the committee makes its selections 12 hours later will depend entirely on what happens in the SEC and ACC championship games.
That leaves Clemson and Alabama. Iowa wins, it is in. The Buckeyes closed strong.
The Tide lock down the number three spot with a solid win over rival Auburn. The comparison isn’t too far off. North Carolina is a team whose only loss came in the first week of the season-a week earlier than Ohio State’s sole defeat past year. Stanford will have defeated eight bowl teams – seven, to be exact, but let’s count USC twice. With both Alabama and Clemson sitting in the top five of most predictive metrics, any change between the two at this point would be seemingly arbitrary.
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Regardless, Twitter feels that they should be in. With that said, Oklahoma is now the only team in the nation who has their ticket to the playoff punched.
