The newest set of College Football Playoff rankings gave us fresh answers … and plenty of fresh questions.
The top feels settled, the middle is a mess, the ACC is struggling for relevance, and, somehow, head-to-head results continue to get ignored by the selection committee.
Here are my takeaways from the latest College Football Playoff rankings.
1. Michigan still controls a route to the CFP
No. 1 Ohio State at No. 15 Michigan. It’s so good that they might play it twice.
The proof of this is that it looks even more likely, based on these rankings, that the Wolverines can win their way into the 12-team bracket with a fifth consecutive win against the Buckeyes.
It’s one of a handful of cleanly laid out paths for entry into the CFP, with the top three teams looking more and more like virtual locks for selection into the bracket. For top-ranked Ohio State, No. 2 Indiana and No. 3 Texas A&M, it’s just a matter of where they will be seeded following next weekend’s conference championships.
But then there’s this: The Wolverines have a path to not just play in the CFP, but face OSU for a second-straight week in the Big Ten title game. If Michigan beats Ohio State and Oregon and Indiana both lose, Michigan would play Ohio State for the Big Ten Championship.
2. Once again … the committee’s logic doesn’t match what happened on the field
For three weeks, we’ve watched this collection of suits ignore the fundamental truth of this game, best articulated in the form of a simple question: Did you beat your opponent or did you lose to your opponent?
The answer is binary — yes or no.
In college football, we respect winning more than any other sport on the planet. We crave undefeated teams only to argue about which undefeated team is better. And for more than 100 years, that was the best we could do. But now, when we can watch two teams line up and settle it on the field in real time, this committee has chosen — repeatedly — to ignore the one great arbiter of Who Is Better.
Notre Dame is not a better team than Miami.
Miami is a better team than Notre Dame.
We know this because they played each other at Hard Rock Stadium, and the Hurricanes defeated the Fighting Irish 27–24 on August 31.
Miami. Beat. Notre Dame.
“[They] were compared this week,” CFP committee chairman and Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said, “but they’re compared in the same pod with Alabama and a one-loss BYU, and the committee still feels that Notre Dame is a complete team and has been consistent throughout the season and deserves to be ranked where they are, at No. 9, ahead of Alabama… and then Miami falls in accordingly.”
That’s a long way of saying: We don’t care about the scoreboard. We don’t care about facts. We don’t care about reality.
3. Win and you’re in
Georgia, Ole Miss, Oklahoma, Oregon and Alabama all join Michigan as one- or two-loss teams that can win this weekend and feel as relaxed as anyone can about their chances of making the CFP.
For Oklahoma, that’s the ideal outcome. For the rest, there are still scenarios in play that could send them into their conference title games with Saturday wins.
4. The selection committee doesn’t seem to care about the ACC
What’s wild about the ACC is that none of its members have a realistic path to the CFP as at-large teams.
Virginia and SMU have the simplest routes to the ACC title game: beat Virginia Tech and Cal, respectively, and they’re in. But there are still a number of scenarios in which those two — along with Pittsburgh, Georgia Tech, Duke and even (or especially) Miami — could reach the conference championship with the right combination of losses elsewhere and the quirks of in-conference strength of schedule.
If that sounds convoluted, it’s because it is. And there’s a better way.
It’s called a 24-team College Football Playoff.
RJ Young is a national college football writer and analyst for FOX Sports. Follow him @RJ_Young.
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