Just as the frustrations with the first College Football Playoff rankings were settling in, the sport went on its usual path of chaos — completely changing the landscape of the projected playoff field.
The rankings got flipped upside down when Georgia fell flat against Mississippi and Miami couldn’t stay perfect when it faced Georgia Tech. Consequently, some teams saw their playoff chances boosted while others are feeling uncertainty in qualifying for the 12-team field.
There’s three weeks left in the regular season − and conference championship week − thus there’s still plenty of chances for the rankings to drastically change. The moves in the second rankings were mostly justified, but still, some teams got the short end of the stick.
Here’s who was slighted this week:
Indiana
The Hoosiers moved up three spots to No. 5, but they still aren’t being completely appreciated by the committee.
Indiana is still one spot behind Penn State, which doesn’t make all that much sense. Yes, Penn State’s only loss was to Ohio State, but Indiana is still undefeated and should be rewarded for being one of four remaining unbeaten teams. Just based off the eye test, Indiana has also been more dominant than the Nittany Lions.
The narrow victory against Michigan − the closest any team has gotten to the Hoosiers − mixed with Penn State dismantling Washington is likely the reason why the Nittany Lions still hold the edge … but Indiana has outperformed Penn State this season. Now, pressure will be put on Indiana against Ohio State, and it will likely be penalized more severely than the Nittany Lions should it also fall to the Buckeyes.
Georgia
There’s nothing wrong with Georgia’s spot. It deserves it. But, it does show how a pretty good football team can become a casualty of the new playoff format.
Thanks to the top five conference champions being guaranteed a spot, the Bulldogs are currently out of the field even at the No. 12 spot thanks to Boise State. Now, the Bulldogs need to hope for plenty of other dominoes to fall to jump back into the field. Georgia is behind the two teams it lost to − Alabama and Mississippi − showing the committee values the head-to-head record. So, the Bulldogs need the Crimson Tide, Rebels or another at-large team to drop another game — one worthy of them falling — just to get in the bracket.
At the moment, Boise State and Army are looking like the top contenders in the Group of Five to qualify, and it won’t matter where they are ranked behind the Bulldogs if they win conference titles. Lots of help is needed in Athens.
Southern Methodist
Only one team is still undefeated in ACC play, yet it doesn’t mean anything when it comes to qualifying for a playoff spot. Southern Methodist should have gotten a big boost with Miami falling from the ranks of the unbeatens, but instead the Mustangs are at No. 14 in the rankings while Miami is still projected to earn the ACC’s automatic bid.
The Hurricanes’ loss to Georgia Tech isn’t necessarily a bad one since the Yellow Jackets are a solid team, but the loss is worse than SMU’s lone loss that came in a close defeat against Brigham Young. Miami and SMU do share common wins against Louisville and Duke, but the Mustangs also have another quality win against Pittsburgh while the Hurricanes don’t boast anything else.
Currently, the only path it looks like SMU has toward making the playoff is winning the conference title, which is a much tougher road than Miami currently has.
Army
Being an undefeated Group of Five team clearly doesn’t mean as much as being a three-loss SEC team.
The Black Knights moved up just one spot but are still behind Missouri and LSU while they also got jumped by South Carolina. It comes after a game in which Army didn’t blow out North Texas, but clearly showed it was the better team in a 14-3 victory. Meanwhile, LSU got wrecked by Alabama, Missouri beat a bad Oklahoma team and South Carolina got a boost from beating a team that wasn’t even ranked by the committee (Vanderbilt).
Barring some miracle, Army doesn’t look like it has much of a chance to make the playoff, which is an unfortunate circumstance for a team having a dream season.
