1. Miami vs. Northwestern vs. Texas A&M
I told you throughout this entire piece not to get into a twist over the first College Football Playoff rankings, and I’m going on appearance after appearance talking about how everyone will need to R-E-L-A-X on how this all goes.
However, blow that all off when it comes to Miami, Northwestern, and Texas A&M, because it’ll be fascinating to see just how much the committee respects what those three have done so far.
Texas A&M should be somewhere around the top five, and it has to be a head of Florida. If it’s behind Cincinnati and/or BYU, then that’s going to be a big, big problem, because eventually, it won’t be if it keeps on winning.
It’ll be a bad look for the CFP if it ranks the Aggies behind teams that don’t have any sort of win within 100 miles of being as good as the A&M victory over Florida. It’ll be a worse look if it punishes A&M for having to play at Alabama.
Northwestern’s ranking is just out of curiosity. It’s one of the few teams that controls its own destiny – win out, win the Big Ten Championship, in no matter what – but how much does the committee respect the team that just stuffed Wisconsin to a dead stop?
A&M and Northwestern will work themselves out in the rankings over the next few weeks. Miami, though, will be the most interesting under-the-radar case because it will have a strong theoretical shot of getting close in the end if it wins out.
The Canes don’t and won’t have a win as good as Texas A&M’s victory over Florida, but if the one loss is at Clemson – perfectly acceptable – and that’s it in a one-loss regular season, then what happens in the ACC Championship could matter.
And here we go. It’s College Football Playoff rankings night. Let’s have some fun.
– What will the top 4 be?
– How will we know if the committee is on its game?
– How the heck do you rank the Pac-12 teams?
– How much will the committee tease Cincinnati and BYU?
[protected-iframe id=”361699434b6d70baf15f631ed2408ac1-97672683-92922408″ info=”https://www.googletagservices.com/tag/js/gpt.js” ]