The second set of College Football Playoff rankings wound up light on turbulence when the 12-member selection committee revealed it Tuesday night, but the question of what will happen with the ACC seems a case of all turbulence, all the time.
No. 1 Ohio State (9-0), No. 2 Indiana (10-0) and No. 3 Texas A&M (9-0) kept their spots from the previous week, with the committee clearly weighing Indiana’s moxie after its 27-24 escape from Penn State. A banner year at Texas Tech (9-1), Lubbock’s rowdiest season since 2008, got juicier as the Red Raiders rode their 29-7 mastery of BYU to leap over Mississippi and take No. 6, nibbling behind No. 5 Georgia (8-1) and No. 4 Alabama (8-1), which also stayed put from last week.
The second set of College Football Playoff rankings wound up light on turbulence when the 12-member selection committee revealed it Tuesday night, but the question of what will happen with the ACC seems a case of all turbulence, all the time.
No. 1 Ohio State (9-0), No. 2 Indiana (10-0) and No. 3 Texas A&M (9-0) kept their spots from the previous week, with the committee clearly weighing Indiana’s moxie after its 27-24 escape from Penn State. A banner year at Texas Tech (9-1), Lubbock’s rowdiest season since 2008, got juicier as the Red Raiders rode their 29-7 mastery of BYU to leap over Mississippi and take No. 6, nibbling behind No. 5 Georgia (8-1) and No. 4 Alabama (8-1), which also stayed put from last week.
“Probably the longest discussion we had in the room was Texas Tech and Ole Miss,” committee chairman Mack Rhoades, the athletic director at Baylor, said during a teleconference.
Five ACC teams crowded the lower regions of the rankings, with one and no more than one figuring to receive a bid to the 12-team playoff. No. 15 Miami (7-2) moved up from No. 18 largely because two of its conference brethren lost: No. 19 Virginia (8-2), which fell from No. 14 after losing at home to Wake Forest, and No. 20 Louisville (7-2), which fell from No. 15 after losing at home to California.
Georgia Tech (8-1) nudged a spot upward to No. 16, just behind Miami. No. 22 Pittsburgh (7-2) also remained on the list ahead of its battle Saturday against No. 9 Notre Dame (7-2).
If the season ended now, the first four games would feature those Fighting Irish at No. 8 Oregon (8-1), No. 10 Texas (7-2) visiting No. 7 Mississippi (9-1), the ACC winner visiting Texas Tech, and then Georgia as host to the top team from the Group of Five, the lower tier of the sport’s top tier.
That team at the moment would be South Florida, one week after it would have been Memphis. The difference between the weeks came in that Memphis went unranked in the first rankings since 2014 to lack any Group of Five team. South Florida debuted on the list at No. 24 this week, after Memphis lost, 38-32, at home to Tulane, another team in the discussion for the annual Group of Five slot. Yet another in the committee talks is James Madison (8-1), doing remarkable things in the Sun Belt in only its third year in the Football Bowl Subdivision. “With James Madison,” Rhoades said, “the part that was really hard to overcome for the committee was their schedule strength. Just quite frankly, that was a big part of the conversation.”
James Madison has wins over Weber State, Liberty, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Louisiana Lafayette, Old Dominion, Texas State and Marshall, with a lone loss to Louisville. South Florida has a win at Florida that will bolster its chances should it remain in the discussion, plus a win at North Texas (8-1) and a romp over Boise State (6-3). Its losses came against Miami and Memphis.
The committee’s second-longest discussion this week, Rhoades said, involved whether to transpose No. 2 Indiana and No. 3 Texas A&M. Indiana had its dramatic escape from Penn State with a closing drive led by Heisman Trophy contender Fernando Mendoza and a brilliant winning touchdown catch by Omar Cooper Jr., while Texas A&M looked like all hell in routing then-No. 22 Missouri, 38-17, in Columbia. Rhoades said that discussion went into the bodies of work, with Indiana’s wins at No. 8 Oregon and at No. 21 Iowa, and Texas A&M’s wins at Missouri and at No. 9 Notre Dame. Ultimately, Rhoades said, it mattered that Missouri was “starting their third-string quarterback, a true freshman,” making it “not quite the team it has been.”
He called Indiana and Texas A&M “really, really close.”
An injury also made its way into the consideration of Virginia, which stood as the top ACC team last week before its 16-9 loss to the Demon Deacons, which happened after quarterback Chandler Morris got knocked out of the game. “Injuries to key players come up in our conversation,” Rhoades said, “and certainly the committee was very well aware that Chandler did not play in the second half and that was certainly part of our consideration and part of our evaluation.”
No. 11 Oklahoma (7-2) would be the team just outside the bracket if the season ended today, a situation it gets a chance to rectify this weekend when it travels to Alabama, which Oklahoma pretty much ousted from the playoff last year with a 24-3 win in Norman. No. 12 BYU comes after that, dropping from No. 7 after its rough trip to Texas Tech, and No. 13 Utah (7-2) follows BYU. The playoff daydreams of Vanderbilt (8-2) remain rational; the Commodores moved up two places to No. 14, just ahead of Miami.
The Hurricanes would be one of the committee’s toughest puzzles. They came in at No. 18 last week as Notre Dame, a team it defeated Aug. 31, held down No. 10. The other team that beat the Hurricanes, Louisville, which did so on the road, wound up behind Miami this time. “The conversation about Miami has been about their consistency,” Rhoades said on ESPN.
1. Ohio State (9-0)
2. Indiana (10-0)
3. Texas A&M (9-0)
4. Alabama (8-1)
5. Georgia (8-1)
6. Texas Tech (9-1)
7. Mississippi (9-1)
8. Oregon (8-1)
9. Notre Dame (7-2)
10. Texas (7-2)
11. Oklahoma (7-2)
12. BYU (8-1)
13. Utah (7-2)
14. Vanderbilt (8-2)
15. Miami (7-2)
16. Georgia Tech (8-1)
17. USC (7-2)
18. Michigan (7-2)
19. Virginia (8-2)
20. Louisville (7-2)
21. Iowa (6-3)
22. Pittsburgh (7-2)
23. Tennessee (6-3)
24. South Florida (7-2)
25. Cincinnati (7-2)
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