The College Football Playoff selection committee ranked Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Notre Dame as the top four teams in the land this week.
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As the 2015 college football season continues to move forward, we’re inching closer and closer to finding out which four teams will get the opportunity to participate in the second-ever College Football Playoff.
Odds for each team to advance to and win the championship: Clemson (34.2%), Notre Dame (11.4%), Alabama (32.2%), Ohio State (22.2%).
Disputing the idea Notre Dame is in if it wins out: On the ESPN rankings show, analyst Kirk Herbstreit strongly opined that No. 4 Notre Dame will make the playoff if it wins out.
Iowa, Baylor, Stanford, Oklahoma State, LSU and Utah round out the top-10.
One of the reasons Clemson is ranked as the No. 1 team is that the Tigers have wins over No. 4 Notre Dame and No. 16 Florida State. Baylor’s Art Briles, among others, has been on record as saying an undefeated Big 12 champion will be in the playoff. They’ll have plenty of chances to move up after playing MI State and MI at the end of the year before a potential Big 10 Championship game. Baylor or Oklahoma State would absolutely be in if one of them goes unbeaten, and Oklahoma would at least be considered. Things could get quite complicated with a lot of big head to heads left in November, which means parity actually hurting the conference.
The Badgers used a strong second half to defeat Maryland last week, and the win propelled them back into the AP poll and produced their debut in the College Football Playoff Rankings. Utah also bears watching even though the Utes lone loss came to USC – a team the Irish beat by 10. Stanford (8-1) climbed four spots and now is ranked No. 7. Their match up in their season finale against Stanford is one of the more intriguing head-to-head match ups in the last weeks of the season as well. Each of those teams would have the second-best loss in the country, assuming Clemson wins out. The committee feels that Iowa’s loss to Nebraska and Ohio State’s loss to Iowa are worse than LSU’s loss at Bama.
– Clemsoning: North Carolina beats Clemson in the ACC championship game.
Notre Dame jumped into the fourth spot in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings.
Well, in both the coach and committee’s opinion, that group includes Notre Dame.
One team making a major move in the top 10 comes from the Big Ten. Given the difficulty of the SEC schedule, Alabama is still the most likely to drop out of the top four. MI and Iowa both jumped up in the rankings to No. 14 and 5, respectively. However, with last year’s inaugural College Football Playoff, there is something for sports fans to stir about in mid-November.
Jeff Long, Arkansas’ athletic director and chairman of the selection committee, does a good job of explaining the poll, but there could be a few very upset undefeated teams in early December.
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How did Alabama respond to losing the 2008 SEC Championship Game to Meyer, Tim Tebow and Florida?
