The new College Football Playoff rankings were released on Tuesday and the surprises keep coming.
While Mississippi State (9-0) remains at No. 1, Florida State, which was ranked No. 1 when the initial rankings were released a month ago, has slipped to No. 3 following a not-so-impressive victory at home over Virginia on Saturday. That left room for Oregon to slide into the No. 2 position.
The No. 4 position is where all the controversy begins. TCU (8-1), off it’s impressive showing against Kansas State on Saturday, took over the No. 4 position followed by Alabama (8-1) who defeated LSU on the road in overtime.
The rest of the Top 10 includes Arizona State (8-1), Baylor (8-1), Ohio State (8-1), Auburn (7-2) and Mississippi (8-2).
TCU is three spots ahead of their Big 12 rivals at Baylor even though the Bears defeated them on the field in a shootout in Waco a few weeks ago. But clearly head-to-head did not matter in this case as the Horned Frogs got the better of the Bears.
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Committee chairman Jeff Long sang the same tune when describing how the committee came to its conclusions.
“For the third consecutive week, the committee looked at the overall body of work, their strength of schedule, and looked at the number of top 25 wins,” said Long. “TCU has two top 25 wins and Baylor has one. And TCU’s loss is a top-10 loss. When you put all those factors together, we still think at this time TCU has a better resume and was voted that way ahead of Baylor.”
Strength of schedule will play a huge deciding factor if TCU and Baylor end up tied for the Big 12 title (the Big 12 does not have a championship game). TCU has victories over two top 25 teams (Minnesota, Kansas State) along with a road victory at Oklahoma. Baylor, on the other hand, had one of the weakest non-conference schedules in the FBS (Buffalo, SMU and Northwestern State of the FCS).
The Bears had an impressive road victory over Oklahoma last Saturday which, on one hand made them look good to the committee, but on the other hand knocked Oklahoma out of the top 25. Both TCU and Baylor will strengthen their argument for being in the top four if Oklahoma can finish strong. As for TCU, they are cheering for Minnesota to have a good end to the season. The Gophers still have to play Ohio State, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
For future season, the committee is making a strong point that strength of schedule will play a huge role in determining the top four teams.
“I think that our rankings will send the message,” Long said. “We as a committee are not charged with sending messages to coaches and ADs about scheduling, but I think it’s likely that they will see the factors that we take into account and will take a message from that. But we’re not trying to send a message about that. We’ve said from the beginning, strength of schedule, total body of work, complete resume, all of those are factored into this decision to get to the best four teams and rank our 25.”
Despite having one loss, Oregon (9-1) jumped Florida State (9-0) to move into second. According to Long, Oregon was moved up because of their three top 25 victories against Michigan State, UCLA and Utah. Two of those victories were on the road (UCLA and Utah). Florida State has beaten two top 25 victories — Notre Dame and Clemson — both at home.
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One could argue that the weaker ACC is hurting Florida State in their actual ranking but if they win out, the weak conference won’t matter. But if they lose a single game, then their hopes are all but gone considering their overall weak schedule.
“It was a very close call, but the committee placed significant value on Oregon’s quality of wins against three top 25 teams, two of which were on the road,” Long said.
Alabama and Arizona State are in good positions if they continue to win. Alabama hosts No. 1 Mississippi State on Saturday. A victory by the Tide would most likely move the Bulldogs out of the top four which would make room for Alabama to slide in.
Other interesting tidbits from the new College Football Playoff rankings include Ohio State at No. 8. The Buckeyes are the highest ranked team from the Big Ten after their impressive road victory over Michigan State on Saturday.
Both Auburn and Ole Miss, despite having two losses each, are still in the top 10. Nebraska (8-1) is currently No. 16 despite having only one defeat.