WSU only rises to No. 20 in latest playoff rankings

The penultimate weekend of the 2016 college football season starts has plenty of teams looking to stay alive as we careen toward a insane finish.

All eight have been champions of power-five conferences, and all eight clearly distinguished themselves during the regular season from the No. 5 ranked team that year. “We don’t know all these things”.

It came a little later than expected, but college football fans finally received a chaos-filled Saturday in Week 11, the type of chaos that makes college football so great. The Buckeyes undoubtedly will also remember the pain of their only loss previous year, when Michigan State spoiled a flawless season with an upset on the last play of the game in the rain in Columbus. Even with Saturday’s loss to Pitt, many feel that Clemson has passed the eye-test as a worthy playoff candidate.

Maurice Clarett scored on a five-yard run to put Ohio State up 31-24, and the Buckeyes held off Miami to secure the national championship.

Buckeyes fans were put in the distasteful position of needing MI to beat Iowa. The Atlantic Coast Conference’s dysfunctional Coastal Division saw both front-runners go down in shockers – No. 14 Virginia Tech to Georgia Tech and No. 17 North Carolina to Duke. The Buckeyes have outscored the last 2 teams they have played 124-6.

So after all that, where does it leave the playoff committee? TCU and Ohio State – teams that were left out the last two seasons – made that case with convincing New Year’s Day Six Bowl victories the last two seasons. The best way to break it down is by conferences rather than teams, since too much is still up in the air. There’s no clear reason why, it could be because they play similar positions or it could be they don’t get along, but that has hurt the Spartans’ chances. Another simpler – albeit unlikely – scenario: If Clemson loses at Wake Forest this week, the Cards win the ACC Atlantic.

The Cardinals’ hurdle could be even more hard to clear than the Buckeyes’. “The only loss that Ohio State has is to a CFP top-10 team, so in the committee’s eyes, Ohio State is deserving of that No. 2 ranking this week”. If that Pac-12 South victor gets enough of a boost, it and Washington might feel like they’re playing for a spot in the playoff. As the College Football Playoff committee attempts to rank competing teams in the most statistically accurate manner possible, everyone around the nation is joining in and stacking up their top four teams as well.

That’s because Penn State (8-2, 6-1), which beat the Buckeyes two weeks ago, has joined MI and Ohio State atop the East. Buckeyes quarterback J.T. Barrett asked. The Wolverines took an early 7-0 lead, but the Mountaineers jumped out to a 28-17 lead at halftime. I do support Alabama and Ohio State being 1-and-2.

This is a Big Ten-dominated season in college football.

There’s no guarantee, of course, that the committee would take a one-loss UW team with a relatively weak schedule over, say, a one-loss Louisville team. Louisville out of the ACC and Washington from the Pac-12 trail closely in fifth and sixth. “They might not be winning, they might not be dominating like they used to, but they’re always going to play us tough”.

We might be on that path again, with Clemson still sitting at No. 4 and Louisville at No. 5.

The forecast is likely to include more upheaval before it’s done.