We’re days away from the 2017 college football season’s Selection Sunday, with the Playoff committee’s second-to-last top 25 rankings releasing Tuesday night. Here’s what to expect and where we stand entering conference title weekend.
Predicting the top of the College Football Playoff rankings, entering the final weekend
Your likely No. 1, your cutoff-point contender, and your perpetually reanimated dynasty.
Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
Here are the remaining Playoff contenders and where they’ll rank entering the final weekend.
1. Clemson2. Oklahoma
Clemson was already ahead and then added a win at 8-4 South Carolina while OU beat 7-5 West Virginia, but I think Oklahoma’s a slightly better choice. Either has a fine case for No. 1 in a year without a clear-cut top team.
- Auburn’s rise means Clemson now has the highest-ranked win of any contender. The committee likes the Tigers’ long list of decent wins and partly forgives its bad loss.
- Oklahoma’s beaten three teams in the top 20 by multiple scores each, including Ohio State in Columbus, arguably a better win than Clemson beating Auburn at home by a TD. But the committee — a group composed largely of old-schoolers — has griped about OU’s shootout wins.
Both are win-and-in. The only prize for No. 1 this year will be hosting a semifinal at the Sugar, since nobody’s close to the Rose.
Auburn and Wisconsin at 3 and 4, in some order
- Auburn has two close road losses to top-20 teams, but also two top-10 beatdown wins.
- Wisconsin has no losses, but its best win is by 9 over Northwestern.
Take your pick. Both are win-and-in. But this does matter. See the 6-through-8 section.
5. Alabama
Does Bama’s resume look a lot like undefeated Wisconsin’s, minus the “undefeated” part? It certainly does. The committee loved Bama up until eight days before Selection Sunday, though.
Many of the numbers still do. The Tide outrank UW in Bill Connelly’s forward-looking S&P+ and backward-looking Resume S&P+. The same goes for ESPN’s Game Control quality stat ... but no longer its Strength of Record resume stat. CPI, a transparent stat more similar to what the committee uses, also has Bama ahead of UW.
Truly deserved or not, I’ll be surprised if Bama’s below No. 5, squarely in Playoff striking distance.
Who else could even rank ahead of the Tide?
- UGA, which has an even uglier loss at Auburn? That one-point win over twice-blown-out Notre Dame has gone from being one of the season’s defining games to a win unlikely to rank much higher than Bama’s 14-point win over LSU. (The AP Poll, for what it’s worth, has ND only two spots ahead of LSU.) Even if UGA were to rank ahead, whoever loses the SEC title game will finish behind Bama anyway.
- A Miami that already ranked behind the Tide, then lost to 5-7 Pitt?
- A two-loss team?
Face it. Zombie Bama is lurching toward the Playoff. We’ll see if it gets there.
6. Georgia7. Miami
Georgia’s win-and-in.
If Miami beats the likely near-final No. 1 to finish 11-1, that also completes a Playoff resume, period.
8. Ohio State
Ohio State will need to beat Wisconsin and also jump these teams:
- The ACC Championship loser
- The SEC Championship loser
- Idle Alabama
If Wisconsin’s No. 3, that’s a great sign for Ohio State’s hopes. Knocking off No. 3 would clearly earn a lot of committee favor.
If only one spot were open, it’d all come down to Buckeyes vs. Tide for spot No. 4. Right now, I think Bama would be the extremely slightly less embarrassing choice for the committee.
Or Wisconsin could just stay unbeaten and make this an easy call.
That’s it. That’s the College Football Playoff race.
Clemson-Miami and Auburn-Georgia are play-in games, so a maximum of two spots can open. Oklahoma and Wisconsin losses are the potential shakeups. The teams that could step in are already in the above group.
- What about TCU? Long way to go. And if TCU beats OU, the committee could still prefer OU. The teams would have split head-to-head, OU could counter TCU’s conference title edge with a significant strength-of-schedule advantage (the two might be roughly equal in the committee’s eyes), and the committee already prefers the Sooners by a lot. TCU having two losses means it doesn’t have win-and-in status like one-loss UGA and Miami do.
- What about USC? Pretty far back, and beating a top-20 Stanford isn’t as big an opportunity as other teams have.
- What about UCF? UCF’s conference isn’t eligible for the Playoff, according to the committee’s actions.
- What about Penn State? No way to gain ground. Basically guaranteed another New Year’s Six bowl, though.
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