The big question is who can still make the playoff and who can’t? The Tar Heels (11-1) are No. 10. North Carolina 11-1 11. Michigan State and Iowa are playing for a spot; the victor is a lock.
Advertisement
“Our charge is clearly rank those top four teams, one, two, three and four, and we’re going to do that by who we think are the best teams, and that will be how they end up one through four”, he said. 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. But that’s the most unlikely of these scenarios, one which requires a ton of stuff to happen over the weekend.
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.
It’s ranking certainly reflects that, as the Tar Heels are not only ranked No. 10, but they’re behind three teams with two losses this season.
If OU plays Alabama, it would be a rematch of the 2014 Sugar Bowl, which the Sooners won 45-31 in a stunning upset.
Things are pretty damn simple – Clemson should beat North Carolina (although I’m shocked the Tigers are only a 5 point favorite), Alabama should murder Florida (rightly, a 17.5 point underdog), Oklahoma is finished and in, and the victor of the Big Ten title game (Michigan State -4 over Iowa) will get the fourth spot. The Hawkeyes head into the Big 10 title game a ideal 12-0 for the first time in school history, with an unconvincing 10-6 victory over a then #19 Wisconsin team and a week 7 win over Northwestern as their key resume builders. 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. That should make for an anticlimactic reveal special on Sunday, right?
Sure, the Big 12 and Notre Dame suffer for not having one or being in a conference, but for the Big 10 it is very key.
No, they do not need a conference.
Stanford is the only Pac-12 team in the conversation, and the conference could potentially be eliminated entirely if USC upsets the Cardinal in the conference title game.
Stanford (10-2, 8-1 Pac 12) could sneak into the playoff if it wins the Pac 12 and either Clemson or Alabama loses.
PredictionMachine.com has crunched the data for 50,000 computer simulations of the most likely teams in the four-team college football playoff (Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma and Iowa). But jumping those two teams only places Stanford at No. 5.
Clemson retained the top spot this week and Alabama is second. The SEC scheduled as many FCS games (11) as Power-5 games.
If Alabama wins, they’re in. Alabama claimed the SEC West with a win over Auburn 29-13. When asked whether the committee has discussed the relative strengths of schedule of North Carolina and Ohio State (their SOS is nearly identical in the Sagarin ratings) in making their rankings, Long said the committee does not consider the Sagarin ratings and doesn’t know how they are calculated, and added that “In the multiple number of metrics we look at, they’re not close”.
Advertisement
First take: “No longer are we in a world of “when” you lose a game matters because losses have been completely devalued”.
