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The second set of rankings from the College Football Playoff committee has been released. The rankings saw Notre Dame climb into the top five, while Miami, Indiana, and Kentucky took drops.
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Georgia jumped up to the top spot in the rankings after Miami lost to Notre Dame. Meanwhile, Utah also jumped up a spot to number two. The first big jump came from Alabama. The two-loss Crimson Tide moved to third after a win over LSU. They are also ahead of UCLA, which is undefeated. Notre Dame also jumped up, moving to fifth after their win over Miami. Miami dropped to seventh with the loss, with Texas sitting in between the Irish and Hurricanes.
Tennessee also moved up a lot after beating Kentucky. They moved to eighth while Kentucky dropped to 11th. Indiana dropped to ninth during a bye week, while BYU fell to tenth after their loss to Utah. The first two teams out of the playoffs are Texas Tech and Wake Forest, sitting 12th and 13th despite both being 8-1. Boise State is the top Group of Six team, sitting ranked 24th overall.
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While some rankings make sense, others do not, and there were some major failures by the playoff committee.
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Tennessee is 7-2 this year, and ended up being ranked eighth in this set of rankings. They are coming off their big win of the year, beating a ranked Kentucky team. Meanwhile, the two losses are to Texas, who was number one in the nation at the time, and South Carolina. Texas, despite losses to Oklahoma and Florida, is above Tennessee with the head-to-head win. Neither Oklahoma nor Florida are ranked in the latest CFP rankings, while South Carolina is. Still, it seems that head-to-head was applied here, with Texas being two spots in front of Tennessee.
Meanwhile, Alabama is also 7-2 this year. They started 5-0, with a win over South Carolina. They also had a win over Mississippi State, who was ranked 16th at the time. The Tide then lost to Georgia at home, and fell to Tennessee on the road, 26-10. Since then, Alabama has defeated both Texas A&M and LSU. While Alabama does have some bigger wins, the head-to-head loss was not considered, something CFP chairman Hunter Yurachek pointed out, per James Fletcher III of On 3.
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“Alabama was in that first pool, Tennessee was not in that first pool,” Yurachek explained. “(Alabama is) No. 1 in their record strength, No. 1 in their schedule strength. They have four — what we call ‘quality wins’ … Alabama, we believe, deserves to be the No. 3 team in the country.”
The CFP uses a pod system to create tiers, grouping teams together before ranking the teams in the pod. Still, Yurachek explained that Alabama has a better strength of schedule.
“Tennessee’s got a couple of quality wins in the win they just had against Kentucky and obviously the win they had against Alabama,” Yurachek said. “They’ve got three wins against teams that their schedule strength is 110 and above. So when you look at their schedule compared to Alabama’s schedule, the committee feels like — and the metrics feel that Alabama’s got a stronger schedule.”
Regardless, the head-to-head game not being factored, and the teams being five spots apart, is an oversight.
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Indiana was ranked fourth in the first set of rankings. That was after a win over Minnesota in overtime. They were off this past week, and in the bye week, dropped five spots. Alabama, Texas, UCLA, Notre Dame, and Tennessee all jumped over Indiana in the rankings. The drop was something that was also defended by Yurachek, per Antonio G. Losada of Athlon Sports.
“Indiana was probably the victim of having a bye week at the wrong time. The committee is really impressed with what UCLA, Texas and Notre Dame did, as well as Alabama, obviously, with their big win at LSU,” Yurachek said.
The committee also noted that every opponent in the Big Ten that Indiana has faced took losses over the weekend.
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“They had six losses that went against their record strength, as well as their strength of schedule,” Yurachek said. “Those metrics affected the committee’s review of Indiana this week, as well.”
The five wins in Big Ten play that Indiana has are over Northwestern, Rutgers, Nebraska, Michigan, and Minnesota. All five of the teams lost, but none of them are ranked in the latest College Football Playoff rankings. Meanwhile, the loss that Indiana has is a four-point loss to Ohio State. That was still when Ohio State was ranked in the top five and had Julian Sayin playing. In the past, the playoff committee has taken into account which players are on the field. Something they have done is consider which players have been injured, such as when Florida State lost their star QB before the playoffs and, despite being undefeated, were left out of the playoffs. Ohio State is without Sayin, so their loss to Oregon, who is ranked 16th in the latest rankings, should not make a massive impact on Indiana, but it seems to have done so.
Currently, there are two teams that are undefeated in college football. They are Utah, which is ranked second, and UCLA, which is ranked fourth. Meanwhile, there are nine teams that have one loss. Seven of those teams are ranked by the CFP committee, including Boise State at 24. The two teams that are 8-1 and are not ranked in the CFP rankings are New Mexico and Liberty.
Liberty has had a solid season this year and got votes in both the AP Poll and Coaches Poll, but was not ranked. Still, they do not have a major win, nor have they faced a power conference team. The loss this year was a 20-13 loss in the first week of the season to James Madison on the road. Since then, they have been playing teams such as Ball State, Coastal Carolina, Gardner-Webb, and opponents from C-USA.
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The bigger gripe may be New Mexico. Unlike Liberty, they were considered by the committee.
“Well, we don’t have New Mexico in our rankings. They were in our pool. They did have an opportunity to get compared with Boise State. We feel like Boise State right now, based on a really competitive game against Oregon. We know New Mexico had a really competitive game on the road. Boise has some other games on the schedule that we like going on the road and beating a good Western Michigan game. They have a win over Fresno, Memphis, win over a Texas State team that’s coming on strong,” Yurachek said. “We just think the quality of wins and their strength of schedule that Boise State has compared to New Mexico, who is a really good team, especially on the defensive side of the ball, right now Boise State has, because they’re 24th, has an edge over New Mexico.”
New Mexico has just one loss this year, falling to Oklahoma by eight on the road early in the season. The fact that three-loss teams, such as Missouri and Oklahoma State, both got ranked, but a one-loss New Mexico is not, shows the lack of respect for the Group of Six teams.
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