Following a 62-39 win over Michigan last weekend, Ohio State has moved up four spots to No. 6 in the College Football Playoff rankings, which were announced Tuesday evening.
The Buckeyes sit just one spot behind the No. 5 Oklahoma Sooners. Of note, the Big Ten West division champions Northwestern Wildcats dropped two spots to No. 21 after a win over Illinois.
Top 10 Rankings:
10. LSU
9. Florida
8. UCF
7. Michigan
6. Ohio State
5. Oklahoma
4. Georgia
3. Notre Dame
2. Clemson
1. Alabama
If No. 6 Ohio State beats No. 21 Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship, No. 1 Alabama beats No. 4 Georgia in the SEC Championship, and No. 14 Texas beats No. 5 Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship, then the Buckeyes have a clear case for being in the four-team College Football Playoffs.
The Buckeyes should want Alabama to win, knocking Georgia out of the playoff race. Assuming that No. 2 Clemson beats Pittsburgh in the ACC championship, the top three teams would be Alabama, Clemson, and No. 3 Notre Dame. The final spot should come down to Ohio State and Oklahoma.
If Ohio State wins and Oklahoma loses, the Buckeyes should be in. A No. 14 Texas win would give every Big 12 team at least two losses, meaning that the Big 12 will not have a spot in the top four and Ohio State should move ahead of the Sooners.
If both Ohio State and Oklahoma win, things will get a bit interesting. The ultimate tiebreaker would come down to style points, quality wins, losses, and the magnitude of the conference championship wins.
The CFP rankings are important this week. The Buckeyes have a case with a Big Ten Championship win and certain other cards falling in their places. But they are heading into a conference championship game trailing Oklahoma, a team that can possibly make or break their playoff hopes.
The College Football Playoff Selection show will be aired on Sunday at noon on ESPN.
The Big Ten Championship:
Ohio State faces Northwestern in the Big Ten Championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana on Saturday at 8:00 PM (ET). The game will be televised on FOX.
Big 12 Championship:
Oklahoma faces Texas on Saturday at 12:00 PM (ET) on ABC.
SEC Championship:
Alabama faces Georgia on Saturday at 4:00 PM (ET) on CBS.
Here is an eye test Alabama, Georgia,, Clemson, and Notre Dame will have played one less game than Oklahoma and Ohio State after all the conference championships.
Alabama played The Citadel, Clemson played Furman, Georgia played Austin Peay. All three of these opponents are from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) also known as Division I-AA. Scrimmages against the JV teams do not count as a game in my book. That leaves Oklahoma who gets to have a do over with Texas which is the only team that beat them.
If this committee has half a spine they would stop rewarding mediocracy and start demanding excellence. If you want to be a BCS Division I-A Champion then play Division I-A BCS schools.
Here is an eye test Alabama, Georgia,, Clemson, and Notre Dame will have played one less game than Oklahoma and Ohio State after all the conference championships.
Alabama played The Citadel, Clemson played Furman, Georgia played Austin Peay. All three of these opponents are from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) also known as Division I-AA. Scrimmages against the JV teams do not count as a game in my book. That leaves Oklahoma who gets to have a do over with Texas which is the only team that beat them.
If this committee has half a spine they would stop rewarding mediocracy and start demanding excellence. If you want to be a BCS Division I-A Champion then play Division I-A BCS schools.
If professional sports magazines mattered at all…
Sporting News, Bill Bender, Nov. 29, 2018
“Ohio State is the only team with enough talent on both sides of the ball, other than Clemson, that can entertain beating Alabama. ”
“Sporting News went with the Buckeyes” over Oklahoma. SN’s reasoning…”head-to-head we think Ohio State would beat Oklahoma.”
Well there it is, I finally found someone who is as critical a thinker as I am 😉 Go Buckeyes beat the stuffing out of those NU turkeys BUT stay healthy!
If worst came to worst, I’d not complain about a Rose Bowl win with the parade and all the trimmings.
Why should Notre Dame get in over a Conference champion?
BIG teams win and drop spots…if the committee actually paid attention, they would know (since it was obvious) that NU rested players against Illinois, so the score shouldn’t matter. I don’t know how one cannot come to the conclusion that the committee has a bias against the BIG…I’m surprised Pitt didn’t move up after being mauled by mediocre Miami.
I just want a Buckeye win Saturday night and the committee can do whatever it wants since that is exactly what the committee is going to do. The bottom line is that the Buckeyes have put themselves in this position 2 years in a row. If they played at PU with 10% of the fire that they had last Saturday we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Go Bucks!
I’ll bet the committee is hoping like crazy for an OU or OSU loss. If both win out and they elect to send ND with no conference title, it will be the first time a 1 loss Power 5 conference champ gets left out. Not a good look for the committee…
OSU’s best remaining tactic is to control what they can- the BIG title game- and hope an impressive win there catapults them. I have no faith in this committee’s “eye test” capability, as their “eyes” are somehow not seeing OSU’s better wins than OU’s, not to mention OU’s complete disinterest in defense (at least OSU tries, for heaven’s sake!). I have a feeling that, on Sunday, OSU fans will be mighty testy after the Playoffs are announced, even if OSU wins convincingly.
Ah ok so Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Georgia lose and Michigan is in. Sounds about right.
Georgia could beat Alabama by 100 and you can bet the farm that they still get in the playoffs. It wouldn’t be even a slight surprise if Saban has already been paid to take a knee. If that happens it makes no difference at all what Ohio State or Oklahoma do. We already know the Gene Smith will bow out while the lobbyists on the SEC payroll……..aka committee members, will herald the almighty god of TuskyLucy.
IF Alabama wins, Oklahoma wins and the Buckeyes win…………..the Rose bowl is the only optional destination for Ohio State.
Moral of the story……..DO NOT CRAP THE BED AGAINST PIMPLES.
The committee won’t care less about Maryland beating Texas rendering that CCG a game between dinky member, and microscopic member, because………some idiots have put a junk Texas team at what? Number 13?
What in the world does “crap the bed against pimples” mean?
It means don’t lose to insignificant opponents
He should say that!
Or you should be able to interpret context!
Up until last week (particularly after the Purdue lost) many of the so-called loyal and faithful fans of Buckeye nation disowned a team with one loss. They knew Ichigan would win 62-39 and they somehow wanted the igans to win presuming that if (all caps) the good guys won, they would be destroyed by ‘Bama, Clemson or the North Indianans. Now it seems like many of them just bought tickets back (all caps) on the Scarlet and Gray express and are upset that the Committee listened to their loud and somewhat noisy prayers to eliminate tOSU altogether from the playoff (playoff we talking playoff). So, be careful what you prayed for – the Committee is on social media as well.
Nobody disowned the team, they simply lost faith. 2 straight years of getting blown off the field by crumpled second hand tin cans will do that.
The committee never listens to ANYONE’S voice, and they didn’t in this case either. Ohio State was ranked behind Oklahoma was already ranked ahead of Ohio State. There were a couple who wrote Ohio State off, but nobody ever stopped loving the guys on the team. I think what’s noisy is your false premised bluster.
Most likely bama oklahoma and the buckeyes win which will put Oklahoma in the 4 spot. The committee will hold the purdue loss and the close calls to Nebraska and maryland against us. We’ll end up in the rose bowl against the pac 12 champ. Dont rule out the committee keeping georgia in the four spot if they lose a close one to bama totally ignoring their “no 2 loss team gets in “ precedent. Their rationale will be oklahomas defense is horrible therefore they cant compete.
When you give up 55 to Iowa and lose…when you give up 49 to Purdue and lose…YOU DON’T GET IN.
We have to take personal responsibility for where we land and quit playing the victim card. Now, if we can manage a season where we don’t lose by 30 points to an UNRANKED team maybe THEN we can complain about some bias, etc. But so long as we continue to lay that one inexplicable and unforgivable egg every year we simply can’t complain.
This can still be a great season.
northwestern and Penn St. fell a couple spots each WHY?!! the anti-Big Ten bias and overly ridiculous love for the SEC is as clear this year as any with this committee….
it will be an absolute joke if oklahoma gets in over osu because they have an “exciting” qb..yes they are explosive on offense–but OSU just dismantled the #1 defense in the country, oklahoma plays wussy big 12 defenses, and OSU has TWO better wins than anything OK has and that won’t change with a win over TX…make this an 8 team playoff already….
The committee has made it clear in the past, better wins doesn’t cancel bad losses. I find it interesting that the committee rewards teams who play soft schedules Notre Daem, Oklahoma ,coudh>, the committee rewards teams that have schedules that don’t give them a chance to lose. The philosophy continue by not penalizing teams conferences who only have 8 games, or schools that play Div II schools. IN other words, the committee favours the SEC and Notre Dame. Every SEC school is getting a gimme game playing Div II teams to pad their already less than impressive resume’s boosted by beating other teams who bolster their records with Div III schools.
What is happening right now is really no different than what happened before where the BCS always had SEC school in the final, even with their soft schedules.
The sad thing is, no one seems to have the guts to stand up to these bullies. Face ti, most of the college football world were SEC bitches even in the BCS era. Nothing has really changed. If LSU hand’t lost to A&M there might have been 3 SEC teams in this year. The simple fact is, the playoff could have been a national championship. The best teams from each conference. Representing teams from the whole country. Instead it’s still the same beauty contest it was in the BCS era, where the SEC proponents continually manipulate the criteria year to year so their teams get in. The Big 10, Pac 12 and Big 12 got totally suckered trusting that there would be some kind of fair process.
One ting is for sure. You can’t win if you don’t get to play. This childish playground back room politicking needs to end and be replaced by a straightforward goal stated in the criteria and adhered to every year. A committee that moves the goal posts every year to favour one part of the country over the others is what we were trying together away from.
If teams from each conference that are good teams enter the play off every year, given that the all have a chance to win on a given night, the conference that gets the most teams in will have the best chance of success. And a conference that rarely gets it’s teams in will have no chance of success.
That’s just simple math.
This needs to change. The committee should select Conference Champions, only, one per conference, with 4 and 5 playing a play-off for the 4 spots.
DISCLAIMER: I firmly hold that enough of the ‘status quo’ will hold that the Buckeyes will go to the Rose Bowl.
That said, Tom has given entertaining scenarios (all possible but few plausible) for weeks so I hope at least he will “play” with the following scenarios (I’m only going to list the provocative/outrageous, the ones Caroline mentioned above don’t count).
Scenario 1) Georgia blows out ‘Bama by 24 or more and the rest of the games are “chalk”. Who’s in and why?
Scenario 2) As above but The Fighting Hermans take down Okie a 2nd time.
Scenario 3) As above but add in Pitt somehow squeaking one by Clemson.
Scenario 4) ‘Bama beats the Bulldogs on a last-second play that’s marred by controversy, but Okie loses and the Buckeyes win ugly over NW, meanwhile UCF mauls Memphis with their 2nd string QB.