Without much action in the top seven (thanks for the convenient cutoff, Northwestern), questions about tonight’s College Football Rankings remain fringy. Although…maybe we should talk about Ohio State.
Will Ohio State Drop from Not Playing?
The Buckeyes are still just 4-0. The teams behind them aren’t particularly inspiring, and didn’t exactly do a lot this last week to change the picture, but if the committee wants to make a point about teams needing to play games, here’s their chance. They can always go back on it later.
Will Iowa State Rise?
Iowa State’s victory over Texas was rather significant for their résumé. Whether the committee will agree with that remains to be seen, and the degree to which they agree will tell us a lot about whether we should resurrect the Big 12 in our discussions of weirdest-case scenarios.
Colorado?
Having adjusted for the committee’s dislike of USC and Oregon last week, our model now thinks Colorado will be the highest-ranked team from the Pac-12. Now, our model isn’t equipped for conference-wide disrespect (it’s equipped for Group of Five-wide disrespect, but one conference getting uniform hate isn’t something we’ve seen in the past), so don’t hold your breath on the Buffs. But if Ohio State’s a top four team and Colorado’s still out of the top 25 (or hardly in it), the eye test is doing a lot of work.
How about ULL? Buffalo?
Louisiana-Lafayette had perhaps the best argument of anyone feeling disrespected last week, having handily beaten the 13th-ranked team on the road and having only lost to the 20th-ranked team, and that by just a field goal. Buffalo is now 4-0 themselves, and have been rather dominant in the MAC, with the fifth-highest average point differential in the nation. As with the rest of these, we shouldn’t expect any shakeups to the playoff picture with these two, but it’ll be interesting to see how many adjustments the committee makes.
