College Football Playoff rankings after Clemson, Washington State upset
After Clemson and Washington State suffered stunning upsets, here’s how the College Football Playoff picture looks entering Saturday’s Week 7 games.
College football has a way of letting you know when you think you know something, you don’t really know anything at all. That’s what happened on Friday night when we all thought Clemson would go into Syracuse and walk out with a win. We all thought Luke Falk and Washington State and their high-flying offense and transformed defense would stifle Cal en route to a win.
Well actually, neither of those things happened as Syracuse and Cal pulled off two of the biggest upsets we’ve seen in the first half of the college football season. It comes on the heels of Oklahoma’s stunning loss vs. Iowa State last week that has suddenly changed the College Football Playoff picture.
Many, including myself, had penciled Clemson into the playoff after assuming they’d run through the ACC unscathed and set up a possible third-straight National Championship Game against Alabama. Clemson is still alive, so forget any talk about Dabo Swinney’s team is out of the Playoff chase. They lost in mid-November to a Pitt team that’s just as big of an underdog as Syracuse was and they won the whole dang thing. Clemson’s margin for error has been reduced dramatically because now they have to be perfect.
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Washington State always seemed to be living on borrowed time and I didn’t think they were a legit contender to win the Pac-12 North division let alone get to the playoff. Nevertheless, they were the No. 8 ranked team and one of the few remaining unbeaten teams in college football.
So where do they stand now?
Washington State is more out of the playoff picture than Clemson, and they may be unofficially eliminated, because they’d have to beat Washington, Stanford and possibly USC in a potential Pac-12 Championship Game. That’s just not happening.
College Football Playoff Rankings
- Alabama
- Penn State
- Georgia
- Washington
First 2 Out: TCU, Wisconsin
I’d have Clemson and Ohio State on the line below TCU and Wisconsin so they still need some teams ranked ahead of them to lose over the next few weeks while they attempt to play perfect football the rest of the way.
Chances are those six undefeated teams won’t get to through the conference championship games unscathed so there will be more top-ranked teams upset this year. When that happens, each loss will benefit Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC and the host of one-loss teams hoping to move up the rankings the second half of the year.