The Ohio State football team held at the No. 3 spot in the College Football Playoff rankings, but a few shakeups around college football affected the top four spots.
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No. 6 Baylor (8-0) understands it won’t get any respect until it plays somebody of outcome, which starts Saturday against No. 12 Oklahoma (8-1). The top candidate to win the Coastal Division is North Carolina, who moved into the CFP Top 25 at No. 23 after hammering rival Duke 66-31.
The second installment of the College Football Playoff Rankings gave us more shakeups. 13 Memphis. The Tigers fell to No. 21 after that loss. No. 4 Baylor also received two first-place votes.
Of those four top-15 Big 12 teams, only Oklahoma State has played TCU. There’s another thing to sound like you’re handing out bonus points for teams that suffered injuries and kept winning – like Ohio State did with Cardale Jones previous year.
– This is Clemson’s third time overall as the No. 1 team in the AP poll. The Tigers were top-ranked in the final regular season poll of the 1981 season, as well as in the final post-bowl poll. There’s ample opportunity for both to lose, but no more than one Big 10 team can get into the Final Four.
Meanwhile, the remaining games that compose the New Year’s Six bowl games – Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, Peach – will select the highest ranked remaining teams that fill their criteria.
Two of the biggest movers of the week were Iowa and Stanford, but neither was particularly impressive over the weekend.
The CFP selection committee had Ole Miss ranked No. 18 in their initial release but a 53-52 loss at home to Arkansas made it clear they are a pretender. So while there’s still a minimum of five more losses to be parceled out between those four teams, if any of them run the table they’ll be likely be ahead of 2-0 Iowa.
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Notre Dame’s best wins after Georgia Tech are against Temple and Navy, two teams from the American Conference. It’s why we see No. 4 Notre Dame now in the playoff picture. The Horned Frogs are followed by Florida State, Mississippi State, Northwestern and UCLA, which moved up four spots from last week. Florida. While Mississippi’s struggles are hurting Florida, surely, the Gators did beat the Rebels, and it makes less sense to consider that win an anchor than it should to consider a loss to USC one. Oklahoma climbed from No. 15 to No. 12 after scoring at least 50 points for the fourth straight week. First of three Big 12 showdowns for the Bears. Barrett, 20, apologized to his family, Ohio State and Buckeyes football fans in a brief statement at a hearing in Columbus (Ohio) Municipal Court where his lawyer said Barrett took responsibility for driving under the influence when he was cited on October 31.
