Oklahoma leapfrogs Iowa, Notre Dame to No. 3 in playoff rankings

You can be sure Coach Dabo Swinney has been working on his celebration dance for the conference title game.

Alabama: The Crimson Tide might have the nation’s top defense.

“I think if you look at the teams across the board, we’ve played, from the start in September all the way through November, a very good schedule”, Kelly said. Point being, just because they are 3-8 doesn’t mean that it’s a walk in the park to play them.

PROTECT THE BALL: The Irish are coming off a sloppy game against Boston College that included five turnovers, including three interceptions by DeShone Kizer.

The Sooners’ perch marks the loftiest of the season by any league team in four weeks of rankings by the CFP selection committee. “We felt Iowa and Michigan State were extremely close”.

“They’re in a position to accomplish the mission that they went on”, he said of the Irish, “and that was to have an opportunity to be part of one of the four teams selected for the playoffs”. The Spartans beat the Buckeyes 17-14 on Saturday to put Ohio State’s chances of a repeat national title in serious jeopardy.

The Irish might be able to get some help from their rivals.

Notre Dame and Stanford, which also still has an outside shot at making the playoff, want a team other than No. 3 Oklahoma to win the Big 12.

Help needed: All right, Baylor fans. Oklahoma’s junior quarterback has been the catalyst in the Sooners’ surge during the second half of the season. Oklahoma (10-1), 4. Iowa (11-0), 5. Oklahoma – which lost to Texas, which Notre Dame beat by 35 – could lose at Oklahoma State. The Fighting Irish have overcome a plague’s worth of injuries to get to 10-1, and boasted wins over No. 15 Navy and No. 25 Temple and ones over eight-win Pittsburgh and talent-rich USC, still a potential Pac-12 South champion. It’s great that they added another tally to the win column, but if they play like that against Stanford everyone can kiss those playoff dreams goodbye. Which other one-loss teams should be in play alongside Clemson? Losses by those teams would assure the ascent, however. Oklahoma, who jumped four spots to No. 3 this week after beating TCU by one last Saturday, could lose to Oklahoma State and then what happens to the Big 12?

Do they reward one-loss conference champions like Iowa and North Carolina by taking them over two-loss teams like MI and Oklahoma? Ole Miss won’t crack the top four, while even a one-loss Florida may not have done enough to warrant inclusion.

The Irish can certainly boost their resume considerably this week by winning at No. 9 Stanford, but it would appear unlikely they’ll catch Oklahoma if the Sooners themselves beat No. 11 Oklahoma State.

Former head coach Paul Johnson made Navy more relevant on a national scale, and Ken Niumatalolo has taken that progress one step further. A win is important for either team but only for bragging rights unless Penn State pulls off the upset against Michigan State.

They like him a lot, apparently, and they’ve got reason. Luckily for Notre Dame, the College Football Playoff committee seems to really like and respect Stanford. Florida (10-1, SEC) 13. Oklahoma jumped over unbeaten Iowa and 10-1 Notre Dame to land in the third spot. But the possibility exists that the Gators are ranked so low that if they defeat Florida State to end the season and somehow beat Alabama in the SEC title game that the mighty Southeastern Conference is left out entirely. Neither is Wisconsin, which Bama beat in the season opener. But Peyton Manning will miss at least the next two games with an injured foot, so we’ll have to settle for Brock Osweiler and the 8-2 Broncos trying to spoil Tom Brady and the 10-0 Patriots’ bid for their second 16-0 regular season.