Changes in playoff rankings after upsets

The College Football Playoff rankings were reconfigured slightly following a topsy-turvy weekend.

After suffering their first defeat, the Washington Huskies not surprisingly relinquished their coveted top-four position in the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings and fell two spots to No. 6 Tuesday.

“The committee this week spent a good deal of time on teams 2 through 6, ” selection chairman Kirby Hocutt said. Washington, meanwhile, will need to root for chaos at the top just like the other schools on the outside looking in; of the three big losses last night, UW’s appears to be the most damaging.

Here’s what we know: After the first seven, the rankings kind of fall off a cliff.

The Allstate Sugar Bowl is guaranteed the Big 12 champ, which would be No. 9 Oklahoma, but because SEC champ Alabama is in the semifinal, it would take the next-highest SEC team, No. 15 Auburn. What gave the Buckeyes the edge? However, either Ohio State or MI is going to fall out following their rivalry game, so things are still ready to get wild.

Wisconsin and Penn State rounded out a highly ranked quartet of Big Ten squads, the two-loss Badgers ranked at No. 7 and the two-loss Nittany Lions ranked at No. 8. Wyoming is a home underdog to San Diego State this week.

It turns out winnings 62-3, even when it’s against Maryland, can matter. The Mountaineers are behind six two-loss teams and three-loss Southern Cal, with Oklahoma visiting Saturday.

Head coach James Franklin’s team was ranked No. 9 and No. 10 in this week’s Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls, respectively, on Sunday. An Ohio State win would clinch an appearance for… Washington State, 23. Florida, 24.

“It’s based on each particular teams resume”, Hocutt said. He is rated as the No. 42 player overall and No. 10 offensive tackle in the nation and is the top player in the state of Kentucky.

Out of the top 25: Texas A&M, North Carolina and Virginia Tech. If No. 11 Oklahoma State wins out but is left out in the cold thanks to that loss at the hands of CMU, that’s pretty tough but still, on some level, understandable.

Here’s the lesson for the Big 12: Play a better nonconference schedule. The number of unbeatens is down to one, Alabama, among Power 5 conference teams.

The top-ranked Group of 5 conference champion gets an automatic berth in this year’s Cotton Bowl.

The Cowboys still control the Mountain West’s Mountain division too, so Boise State could miss out on the MWC title game.