The selection committee is composed of 12 members, including Jeff Long, Barry Alvarez, Mike Gould, Kirby Hocutt, Tom Jernstedt, Bobby Johnson, Tom Osborne, Dan Radakovich, Condoleeza Rice, Mike Tranghese, Steve Wieberg and Tyrone Willingham.
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Strength of schedule – or, rather, strength of wins – so far hinders the Big 12 teams such as Baylor and Oklahoma State. We discussed that. We discussed a lot of things in that committee room. Especially when that loss came by way of a blow out at home. Alabama is favored to match that Mississippi State win this weekend, and it has wins over Georgia and Wisconsin that LSU can’t match. Navy, Houston and Temple are the only American Conference teams that haven’t lost a league game yet, and Houston is the only overall undefeated team left.
Long basically said, that when talking about why an undefeated Baylor was behind Notre Dame and Iowa. Ohio State is getting a bump because of what they did last season, and Clemson has the best win (in the CFP committee’s eyes) of any team in the country beating Notre Dame.
If Ohio State wins the rest of its games, it will make the College Football Playoff. Alabama (8-1) 3. Ohio State (9-0) 4.
The second installment of the College Football Playoff rankings features two Big Ten teams in the Top 5.
A year ago, the Fighting Irish were a win against Florida State away from cracking the top four in rankings during the regular season, but a loss was followed by four more over the next five games and Notre Dame never sniffed any playoff interest.
With the rankings changing weekly, what is the chance that these teams will be included in the four-team playoff?
As for Notre Dame, they beat Pittsburgh on Saturday and moved from number five up one spot to number four and moving into a playoff spot. “Three teams lost ahead of them, so we felt they needed to move up”. “We’ll have a clearer picture on Baylor in the future”. However, in the most likely title game, Alabama would defeat Dabo Swinney’s team. After that, it’s Charleston Southern, the Iron Bowl versus a beat down Auburn team and the SEC Championship. Somebody deserving will ultimately be left out. Sure, Notre Dame’s wins against USC and Navy look better, and there is no shame in losing by two points on the road to Clemson, but a few factors are working against the Golden Domers. That’s sounds like a more promising matchup during basketball season, but Orange fans should be plenty excited to see the top-ranked Tigers live this week. That’s more “pretty” wins than No. 4 Notre Dame and No. 5 Iowa.
The Bulldogs are looking to stay alive in the conference race with a win over the Crimson Tide.
While a one-loss SEC champion is a Playoff contender no matter what, Alabama’s clearly the SEC’s strongest candidate to make the Playoff at this moment. But they pulled out a fourth quarter win in a very ugly game. They went on to win the national championship. It might not be enough to vault Baylor but the Cardinal is already ranked higher than the Cowboys, so could OSU jump them?
LSU and Leonard Fournette will be tough to keep out of a major bowl with one loss, so the Peach Bowl will get the Tigers. Even if you think the SEC is overrated, at the moment, good luck coming up with anyone with a better resume over the last six weeks. They are in position to run the table and play in the College Football Playoff. The College Football Playoff Committee clearly does not think highly of the Big 12 Conference up to this point in the season.
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Compared to Week 10, Week 11’s schedule is considerably light. But the committee still likes Baylor more, even though the Bears are yet to beat a team with a winning record. Meanwhile, the No. 5 Iowa Hawkeyes jumped ahead of No. 6 Baylor Bears on Tuesday. “We got a big one this week against a very good opponent”.
