The College Football Playoff rankings are out and these teams should be ticked.
The point of ranking anything is to get people really upset and the College Football Playoff committee is really good at that. After the first rankings were released on Tuesday night, of course, there are going to team upset they didn’t make the top four, and upset about their positioning in the top four. The only ones who really won’t have a gripe with the committee is the No. 1 team and their fans.
Before the reveal of the rankings, I thought the top four would be: LSU, Ohio State, Alabama and Clemson with Penn State and Georgia the first two teams out. I thought there was a chance either Alabama or Clemson would be on the outside looking in due to their lack of quality wins.
After the rankings were revealed to be: Ohio State, LSU, Alabama and Penn State, I knew Clemson had the biggest reason to be upset.
Clemson is ranked ahead of Penn State according to SP+, ahead of LSU and Penn State according to ESPN’s FPI, FEI, and Sagarin and ahead of Alabama in the Massey Ratings.
The biggest reason Clemson is ranked at No. 5 has more to do with the conference they play in rather than the quality of team that Dabo Swinney has. The ACC is bad. It’s the worst Power 5 conference and the American Athletic Conference is playing better football. It’s not doing any favors for Clemson when Wake Forest is the only other team from the league ranked. Clemson doesn’t have the same number of opportunities as SEC or Big Ten teams have to measure up against other higher-quality teams.
Just because Clemson is in a conference with bad teams doesn’t mean Clemson isn’t a great team.
The Tigers haven’t passed the eye test for parts of the season. Trevor Lawrence actually looked like he was a human being of flesh and blood and not a long-haired, football-throwing machine sent from the future. He struggled with interceptions and bad decisions and it almost cost Clemson vs. North Carolina. But they still won. The worst they looked was still a win. Their best is still definitely among the four best teams in the nation despite the College Football Playoff committee disagreeing to this point.
Clemson players, coaches, fans and anyone else associated with the program can be in their feelings tonight and the rest of the week, but in the end, this doesn’t even matter.
If Clemson wins all their games, they are going to be in the playoff.
Either LSU or Alabama will be out and either Penn State or Ohio State will be out.
Clemson would miss the playoff if the season ended today but they might have the best odds to make it. If anything, Swinney and his coaches can use this slight as motivation. As good as this team is, they still haven’t played their best football yet. That’s a scary thought considering the level of high-end talent at big positions. No one would be surprised to see them win the national championship in January.
Then, we’ll all be laughing at the rankings on Nov. 5 that said Clemson was the fifth-best team in the nation.
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