The first College Football Playoff rankings are coming on Tuesday night, inarguably the most consequential decision being made in America on November 3. How the CFP committee slots its top 25 teams on Tuesday night will chart the course for our country.
Well, at least until next week’s rankings after an absolutely loaded Week 10 of college football.
Sure, it’s not the midterms, but the first CFP rankings absolutely matter because we’ve seen in the past that the committee can box itself into some difficult spots with the early rankings, as it did by putting Miami behind Notre Dame last year, forcing a controversial correction after both teams sat idle on conference championship weekend.
They’re also intriguing for a Penn State fan because while the Nittany Lions have been going through it in Matt Campbell’s first year at the helm and haven’t beaten Ohio State since 2016, it’ll be nice to see the Buckeyes slide after their loss to USC.
The circumstances surrounding the loss, namely Julian Sayin’s injury, aren’t necessarily cause for gloating, and Penn State is undeniably in a worse spot than its neighbors to the West, but watching the early stages of what could be a meltdown for Ryan Day’s program in their final season with Jeremiah Smith, who is easily one of the greatest college football players of all time, would be pretty delicious.
The Buckeyes fell to No. 11 in the AP Poll on Sunday, down nine spots from No. 2 after taking their second loss, and factoring in how meaningfully worse the team looked without Sayin, the CFP committee could consider dropping them a few spots further.
Here’s my prediction of how it will play out on Tuesday night:
- Miami (FL)
- Georgia
- Utah
- UCLA
- BYU
- Notre Dame
- Indiana
- Alabama
- Kentucky
- Texas
- Ole Miss
- Ohio State
- Texas Tech
- Wake Forest
- Tennessee
- LSU
- USC
- Missouri
- Houston
- Boise State
- South Carolina
- Florida
- Iowa
- Northwestern
- Arizona
The CFP committee can’t make the same Notre Dame mistake twice
The AP Poll currently has Notre Dame ahead of BYU, both with one loss, and BYU has the head-to-head. The committee can’t make the exact same mistakes with Notre Dame two years in a row, especially when this could all sort itself out on Saturday, with Utah hosting BYU and Notre Dame hosting Miami.
Elsewhere, the AP Poll has Kentucky one spot ahead of Alabama. Sure, Kentucky has just one loss, but Alabama pounded Kentucky head-to-head, so that would be an easy flip as well. The other big movement could be near the bottom, where Northwestern absolutely should be in the Top 25, with two losses coming on the road at Indiana and Oregon. I think New Mexico falls out. The committee didn’t respect the Group of Six last year, even though two eventually made the field because five-loss Duke won the ACC.
As for Ohio State, the question is whether they can hold off one-loss teams like Texas Tech and Wake Forest to protect against a major fall. Given that one of their losses was on the road at Texas, probably, but that was with Sayin, and this is clearly a different team with Luke Fahey at QB.
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