Playing ‘what-if’ with OSU’s 2011 team and the College Football Playoff

Tuesday’s ranking reveal painted the clearest College Football Playoff picture of the 2015 season. Here is a look at some of the key games that will have a huge impact on who makes the final four teams for this year’s playoff.

Iowa is an underdog to Michigan State, while Ohio State and Stanford are hot on their tails. There are some random Big 12 and Sun Belt games that’ll be going on, but the ones you really want to watch are the conference championships. Senior defensive end Shilique Calhoun (8.5 sacks) was named first-team All-Big Ten for the third straight season and heads a unit that includes sophomore nose tackle Malik McDowell (11.5 tackles for losses) and junior middle linebacker Riley Bullough (90 tackles).

If those predictions hold, the matchups will be Alabama taking on Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl game, while Clemson and Michigan State will play in the Orange Bowl.

“The committee debated long and hard about the No. 1 and No. 2 teams”, College Football Playoff committee chairman Jeff Long said.

So to have a shot at reaching the playoffs, Stanford fans should be rooting for North Carolina to upset Clemson and/or Florida to pull a shocker and take down Alabama.

Some rankings suggest the committee values strength of schedule; Stanford at No. 7 and Notre Dame at No. 8 are two examples.

The Hawkeyes come into the game undefeated after going through the regular season 12-0 and they would like to finish things off in the Big Ten title game. And to think, a few years ago many believed the playoff would feature at least two SEC teams every season. So that means, in only its second year of existence, the CFP could be without an SEC team entirely.

That leaves it up to the ACC Championship Game to take a great final four and shake it until it is upside down.

The latest College Football Playoff ranking is out and the top four are unchanged, with Clemson and Alabama still holding on to the top spots, followed by Oklahoma and Iowa. Yeah, the win over MI was fortunate but winning at Ohio State wasn’t a mistake.

Let’s just get this out of the way. With the teams sitting at No. 4 and No. 5, respectively, in this week’s playoff rankings, neither is in danger of being passed after a win. The first and most obvious is defending national champion Ohio State, which checked in at No. 6 behind Big Ten brethren Michigan State and Iowa.

North Carolina: If the No. 10 Tarheels beat No. 1 Clemson but don’t get a playoff spot – they probably wouldn’t – this could set up a Notre Dame-North Carolina Peach Bowl. Clemson can clinch the No. 1 seed for the playoff in what should be an entertaining showdown.

The selection committee jumped the Tar Heels from 14th to 10th, but that leaves little doubt that victories over two FCS schools (North Carolina A&T and Delaware) are more of an albatross around North Carolina’s neck than a loss to Texas is for Oklahoma.

A win for either North Carolina or Florida frees up a spot for which a number of teams can stake reasonable claim. That the committee slotted the Cardinal just one place behind one-loss Ohio State indicates they’d likely pass the Buckeyes should they win Saturday.