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The College Football Playoff Top 25: Where ranked Big Ten road wins mean nothing, SEC losses don’t matter and two-loss Iowa State is the toast of the committee. Whatever. None of this ever made sense, and it probably never will.
Indiana is No. 11 in the latest CFP rankings, a one-spot bump from last week’s puzzling placement. You’ll recall that IU stayed put at No. 12 last Tuesday despite a road win over then-No. 16 Wisconsin, the justification being that, because the Badgers fell out of the top 25 after that game, it didn’t count as a ranked victory for the Hoosiers.
*fart*
Anyway, it’s still hard to parse when you see what the committee did this week with 8-2 Florida, which fell only one spot to No. 7 after a bad loss to an unranked, 24-point underdog LSU squad (Editor’s note: LSU suuuuuuucks, brother). One spot! That’s it! But we already knew that the committee is absolutely blind to SEC losses, given its view of two-loss Georgia, which moved up to No. 8 this week. (Second editor’s note: Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin is on the CFP committee. So.)
Let’s check in on Tom Allen’s liked Tweets while we’re here:
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Revsine and Allen are right, though. It is laughable. Because, as it’s becoming ever more clear, if you’re not Name Brand U in the eyes of Football Guys, your ranking will reflect it.
We all acknowledge that if preseason No. 7 Penn State had Indiana’s exact resume (three wins over teams ranked at the time, 7-point road loss to OSU), it would probably be ranked 5th-7th, right?
— crimson quarry (@crimsonquarry) December 16, 2020
It’d get The Georgia Bump.
OK, going to go fight my stepdad now
But let’s steer this back to IU, which was able to move up a spot thanks to North Carolina’s drubbing of Miami. As we mentioned the other day, Indiana needs to move into the top 10 to feel good about its odds of making a New Year’s Six bowl — and it should probably already be there, given that *deep breath* its lone loss came by a touchdown to No. 4 Ohio State, it’s ranked No. 7 in both the Associated Press Top 25 and the Amway Coaches Poll and its strength of record is considered No. 4 among Football Bowl Subdivision teams *exhales*.
But man, as things continue to play out in the dumbest, most unscrupulous way possible, it’s getting harder and harder to feel good about IU’s odds of getting a New Year’s Six berth now.
Bad job, everybody.