“The committee debated long and hard about the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams”. There is still a lot of football to be played and some chaos could ensue.
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There will be no result from above that will affect Oklahoma (11-1), which has finished its regular season since the Big 12 does not hold a conference championship game. If the Tide lose focus this year – that was Alabama’s excuse last year for losing to Ohio State in the first round – it is on the guy making millions of dollars.
Iowa did as Iowa does and strangled Nebraska to death, setting up a showdown with Michigan State to determine which Big Ten team will earn a spot the field.
The Trojans have played four games against ranked teams, and they’re 1-3 in those four games. Ohio State, now sixth, is the highest-ranked team without the possibility of a conference championship and appears to be the only non-champion with the opportunity to sneak into the playoffs. After that it’s Alabama (11-1) at #2, Oklahoma (11-1) at #3, Iowa (12-0) at #4, and Michigan State (11-1) at #5.
How Florida wins: The Gators have one of the worst offenses in the country, ranking 104th out of 127 FBS teams in total offense, so they’ll need to find different ways to score.
Just Right – No. 10 North Carolina: Without a doubt, North Carolina’s ranking is the most interesting one to try to figure out.
It could be so easy if Clemson and Alabama win…you would have the Big Ten Champion, the Big 12 champion, the SEC champion, and the ACC Champion all with one loss or fewer.
Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma and Iowa are the top four teams in the latest College Football Playoff rankings. The Sooners went unbeaten in November, racking up wins over Oklahoma State, Baylor and TCU en route to a Big 12 title. Oklahoma already wrapped up the conference in convincing fashion, a 58-23 romp of Oklahoma State, and now get to sit back and watch everyone else battle.
The CFP selection committee reevaluates the teams each week, and Long said games at the start of the season are ideally weighted equal to games at the end of the season.
Due to the Big 12 tiebreakers, Baylor actually clinched the conference title in the final week of the season, forcing the committee to elevate the Bears above the Horned Frogs. Coming off a win over Notre Dame, Stanford would make a strong case for the CFP with a conference title victory over a revitalized USC team.
Clemson has wins against two teams in the committee’s top 10, Notre Dame at 8 and Florida State at 9. They’re also the third-ranked team within their own conference, behind No. 9 Florida State. If Alabama were to somehow stumble, it would be a very egregious mistake as Florida has been very weak over the last month of action.
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In 2016, as the Big Ten joins the Big 12 and Pac 12 in playing nine conference games, there’ll be less opportunity to schedule Power-5 games. The experts at TheMachinesPicks.com are not giving away too much detail on who they think will win. If Florida wins, the SEC gets left out in the cold. The Playoff poll makes them quaint and irrelevant now, but it also means that the current polls aren’t quite what we could expect had the Committee never came into existence. The Tide will give the committee members every excuse they need to rearrange the final rankings.
