Too soon to get worked up over CFP rankings

“We have a few teams that are one-sided with very strong offenses but we haven’t seen their defenses tested”. Alabama crushed Notre Dame 42-14 in the 2012 BCS Championship Game amid a scintillating atmosphere a year before Clemson outlasted Ohio State in a 40-35 Orange Bowl shootout. It has been a full 33 years since Clemson football has sat atop a ranking. LSU, Ohio State, and Alabama rounded out the rest of the “Playoff Spots”. The last time it happen was in 1982, as a matter of fact.

Following the Crimson Tide comes Notre Dame (7-1) at the fifth spot, Baylor (7-0) at the sixth spot, MI State (8-0) at the seventh spot, TCU (8-0) at the eighth spot, Iowa (8-0) at the ninth spot, and Florida (7-1) at the tenth spot.

My biggest criticism of the committee this week though has to do with Baylor entering at No. 6. “They have two other wins against teams with better than”. Baylor has outscored their opponents by 34.6 points per game. When the numbers are that big, a touchdown doesn’t mean much.

So let’s take a look at everybody else. The Bears have played two road games so far, facing teams with a combined record of 1-15.

Although ranked seventh in the AP poll, the Tide leaped over unbeatens such as Baylor, TCU and MI State in the season’s first CFP rankings.

So who has a better shot between MI State and Iowa? Can’t we get someone with more gravitas like Tom Osborne, Barry Alvarez or a potted plant? The Pac-12 had three teams in the Top 25 starting with Stanford(11), Utah(12) and a team that was expected to contend in the South, UCLA(23) just hanging on. That remains to be unseen, at least until Saturday, but they’ve proven they can win under coach Saban and will likely continue to do so. If a team wants to stay in the top four, they need to win.

No. 11 Florida can clinch its first SEC East title and trip to the conference title game since 2009 with a victory against Vanderbilt in Gainesville, Florida. For weeks the rankings had no teams from those conferences.

Best-case scenario for the Pac-12: A Stanford-Utah conference title game produces a 12-1 champion and either the Big 12 contenders knock each other off and create a one-loss champion or the SEC champion ends up with two losses.

All things equal, TCU’s opponent wasn’t as impressive as were the three teams behind them, but supposedly things weren’t equal-the committee had them ranked higher the previous week.

What does all that mean?

After all, it’s only November 3, 2015, and decision weekend doesn’t begin until December 5, 2015. But the AP and Coaches Poll treat Memphis even worse, so I can’t single out the CFP committee too much here. An FSU win propels the Seminoles up the rankings. The College Football Playoff National Championship will be held in Glendale, Ariz. on January 12, 2016.