Saturday marked one of the wildest days in college football history, with five top-11 AP ranked teams losing and four of them losing to unranked opponents. In a word, it was chaos.
And the chaos makes the College Football Playoff more complicated. Good news for the relevant CFP selection committee? The group won't meet for another four weeks, so there will be plenty of additional data and results to help complete the picture before the 13 committee members have to rank these teams from 1 to 25.
But incomplete resumes have never stopped anyone from analyzing the playoff picture, and they won't stop me from being nervous, either. The beauty of the new 12-team CFP format is that one loss doesn't automatically disqualify a team, but it can drop them from my CFP recap immediately afterwards. So, even though Alabama has the best win in the country (over Georgia), I don't have the Crimson Tide in my bracket right now due to their loss to Vanderbilt (and six consecutive quarters of poor defense). However, Alabama can certainly get back on the field and will have plenty of opportunities to do so throughout the remaining SEC schedule.
Texas jumped back into the top spot in the AP poll this week – thank goodness for weeks of inaction! — and the Longhorns are also back at the top of my CFP bracket. Their best win is better than Ohio State, although the Buckeyes have a great chance to change that this Saturday when they travel to Eugene, Ore.
I moved Clemson to third place as ACC champion. The Tigers have played exceptionally well since their Week 1 loss, and I think some of my colleagues are punishing them too much for a lopsided loss to one of the best teams in the country. It's possible that others believe more in the quality of wins than in the severity of losses, but personally I believe we need to hold teams accountable for the losses they suffer. (I'll get to Notre Dame in a moment.) And after Miami had to run away for a second straight week, it's time to recognize Clemson as the new leader in the ACC. It would actually be quite funny, and perhaps appropriate, after all the obituaries written about the death of the Dabo Swinney dynasty, that the Tigers would go out and win the league and its automatic bid this season.
I also moved BYU to No. 4 as the Big 12 champion. It's a bit of a reset for me, knowing that the undefeated Cougs deserve to be in first place given their outright victory over Kansas State, a team I consider a top contender in the league. I realize that Texas Tech is currently the actual leader in the Big 12 (since the Red Raiders have played three league games), but that is based on the caliber of BYU's best win.
Big deals are pretty hard to give away these days. I'm not sure Penn State is one of the best big teams in the country right now, but the Nittany Lions have been playing relatively consistently and consistently, so I'm giving them the edge over Miami (which required a couple of dramatic come-from-behind wins and going undefeated) for now. Plus, we're talking about deeply flawed teams. Notre Dame is playing well enough to stay in the rankings after a brutal loss to Northern Illinois, and Louisville needs to break the skid to retain its season-ending win, but for now I'm encouraged by the win over the Cardinals, some improvement in the passing attack, and that's about it strong defense that the Irish were in my compartment. (I'll admit that this logic also makes sense for Texas A&M, whose lone loss also looks better now, and the Aggies will be considered more closely next week.)
Ole Miss' loss to Kentucky a week later seemed less severe given the extent of the losses suffered by Alabama and Tennessee. So the Rebels are also jumping into the CFP bracket for now. Kentucky can be quite good! This league is very confusing right now, which is one of the reasons I'm leaning towards the Big Ten ultimately winning. And who is better than the 6-0 Hoosiers? Curt Cignetti's crew has given Indiana its best start in nearly six decades, and it's no wonder the Hoosiers are winning games. They are basically healthy on both sides of the ball, and their great playmaker is Kurtis Rourke. They don't have any wins on their resume yet, but there are no significant flaws – there are plenty of winnable games left on the schedule.
Meanwhile, after UNLV's loss to Syracuse, I moved Boise State onto the field as my top-ranked Group 5 champion. Not only is Ashton Jeanty one of the greatest players in college football, but he's also likely the first running back selected in the spring NFL draft. The Broncos struggle on defense (to put it mildly), but I'm hopeful the Jeanty-powered offense will take them far this year. If Boise State wins the Mountain West and suffers its only loss in a tight game against Oregon, the team could have a good chance of finishing fourth in the standings. It will all depend on who wins the Big 12 and how much its top teams beat each other, but there is definitely a real chance that at the end of the season the G5 champion will overtake the Big 12 champion. There is currently no such possibility reflected in my ladder, but I want to make sure everyone is ready for that potential. After all, crazier things have happened in this crazy sport.
