The penultimate College Football Playoff rankings were revealed on Tuesday night ahead of the conference championship slate this weekend. Here are five takeaways from the latest rankings:
The ACC could actually miss the playoff entirely
While it seemed unlikely that the power conference would be left out of the playoff, there is a realistic possibility of that happening. Even though Miami (10-2) is ranked 12th, the Hurricanes will not be playing in the conference championship. Instead, No. 17 Virginia (10-2) will play unranked Duke (7-5).
Should the Blue Devils win the ACC title, they clearly would not move all the way up to the 12-team field, leaving the door open for both the American champion (No. 20 Tulane or No. 24 North Texas) and 25th-ranked James Madison from the Sun Belt to claim the final two spots.
Top 10 features a few changes after Texas A&M’s loss
Ohio State and Indiana remain the top-two teams ahead of their Big Ten Championship clash on Saturday, while Georgia, Texas Tech, Oregon and Ole Miss each move up one spot after Texas A&M suffered its first loss of the season. The Aggies, Oklahoma, Alabama and Notre Dame
round out the top 10.
Despite losing head coach Lane Kiffin to LSU, Ole Miss still got rewarded for its success up to this point and Alabama leapfrogged Notre Dame despite both teams winning their respective games. The Fighting Irish now hold down the final at-large spot at No. 10 with the five highest-ranked conference champions being guaranteed a spot.
