College Football Playoff rankings: Four key questions before the committee’s latest Top 25
Five Power 5 teams remain unbeaten heading into the final weekend of the regular season, which sets up massively meaningful rivalry games but also some of the most difficult decisions in years for the College Football Playoff selection committee.
This week’s rankings are the fourth of five in-season rankings, released each Tuesday through the end of November. They provide a window into the thinking of this year’s selection committee, an understanding of what it values and how it sees these top contenders. As a reminder, it is an incomplete evaluation. But it’s a start, and it can be a signal.
Here are the four most pressing questions heading into Tuesday’s rankings release:
Injuries are, unfortunately, a huge part of football. But it’s still gut-wrenching to see them happen to players like Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis , who experienced the lowest of lows before leading the program back to national prominence over a five-year rise. The Seminoles’ veteran leader suffered a season- and college career-ending leg injury in a November nonconference game just two weeks before the ACC championship with a CFP semifinal appearance within reach, a devastating blow to Florida State.
The committee will have to discuss the impact of Travis’ injury this week in its meetings. Fortunately for the group, it’s set to receive some significant data points before it needs to make its final determinations for the four-team field. The committee can begin by evaluating Florida State’s response under backup quarterback Tate Rodemaker in its 58-13 win against North Alabama, an FCS program, but the members will learn much more in the coming days when FSU hosts Florida and then takes on Louisville in the ACC title game.
If this team wins out with Rodemaker at the controls, it will be in the CFP. If there’s a drop-off in offensive production without Travis, that should affect the team’s seeding but not its selection. But we’ll get a better sense of how the committee may handle this injury when we hear from chair Boo Corrigan on Tuesday night, with five undefeated Power 5 teams continuing to demand tough decisions.
Last week, the selection committee decided to move Georgia ahead of Ohio State based on the strength of the Bulldogs’ resume, which had improved significantly over the previous two weeks with top-15 wins against Missouri and Ole Miss . The dominance shown by Georgia made it an easy call to value those performances more highly than Ohio State’s two best wins so far. But the committee did not similarly adjust its opinion on Washington, despite the wins the Huskies have picked up in recent weeks.
Unbeaten Washington has the best win in the country based on the committee’s own rankings: a victory over CFP No. 6 Oregon . Since then, the Huskies have added wins over USC and Utah (both teams that might not be ranked this week but remain quality wins as Power 5 teams with winning records) and last Saturday held off No. 11 Oregon State on the road in challenging weather conditions. Plus, Washington’s September win at Arizona looks better and better, as the Wildcats are a top-20 team now. The committee has to put the Huskies in the top four, rewarding a resume that is clearly superior to that of Florida State and, honestly, Ohio State and Michigan as well. But I can’t imagine the committee overcorrects that far, so I’ll predict just a simple swap of Florida State and Washington at No. 4 and 5.
This is a fascinating question because we’re not used to having this many unbeaten teams this late in the year. Obviously, Michigan and Ohio State both control their own destiny, with the winner of Saturday’s game in Ann Arbor all but assured a spot in the CFP (with a win over Iowa in the Big Ten title game). Georgia controls its own destiny; win out, and the Bulldogs are probably the No. 1 seed.
Both Washington and Florida State should control their own destiny as well, although the path is a little murkier through no fault of their own. The Seminoles will need to show the committee that they can play at a high level without Jordan Travis, and they have two opportunities to do so, against Florida and Louisville. Win out, and FSU should be fine. It’s the same assignment for Washington, even though the committee has ranked them fifth out of the five Power 5 unbeatens in each of its rankings to date: Win out, and the Huskies should be fine.
The CFP system was not set up to leave out an unbeaten Power 5 conference champion.
Let’s shift our attention to the one-loss teams. Alabama also looks like it controls its own destiny, because if it wins out to become a one-loss SEC champion, it will have a win over current No. 1 Georgia, which would then become the best win any contender has. Oregon seems to have a pretty clear path to the CFP as well, assuming the Ducks get to a rematch with Washington in Las Vegas for the Pac-12 title. That game should essentially serve as a top-four play-in game. The committee has already shown it likes the Ducks, keeping them as the highest-ranked one-loss team in each edition of the in-season rankings, despite a resume that is lacking compared to those of Texas and Alabama.
The Longhorns need to root for chaos to get into the Playoff. The Big 12 is the only league without an unbeaten contender, so it would be the Power 5 conference on the outside looking in if we end up with undefeated SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12 champs.
James Madison is no longer a factor in the Group of 5 race, both because its latest waiver request for eligibility was denied by the NCAA and because it lost to Appalachian State in overtime on Saturday. With the Dukes fully out of the picture, it’ll be useful to see how the committee sees the top Group of 5 teams as they vie for the coveted New Year’s Six bowl spot reserved for the highest-ranked conference champion from those leagues.
No. 24 Tulane was the only G5 team ranked by the CFP selection committee a week ago, but this week’s AP Poll also included Liberty and Toledo , two other G5 schools we could see in Tuesday night’s rankings. Liberty is 11-0 and atop Conference USA, and Tulane and Toledo are both 10-1 at the moment. But the Green Wave have a clear strength of schedule advantage, and their lone loss came to a top-15 team in Ole Miss. The defending AAC and Cotton Bowl champs certainly appear to have the edge heading into the final week of the regular season, but hopefully at least one other G5 team is ranked this week to offer a glimpse of how tight that race could be.
(Photo: Jim Dedmon / USA Today)
