Ohio State No 1 – Really?
The season’s first College Football Playoff Rankings have been published and as expected the SEC & Big Ten are dominating. However, it is slightly surprising to see two in the playoff positions for each and even more so that Ohio State is ranked No 1. Their best win (and only currently ranked one) is against 6-2 Wisconsin while LSU has wins over No 10 Florida & No 11 Auburn. Everything is subjective of course but LSU has better wins in our opinion.
We sort of agree with Clemson being on the outside as they did struggle against UNC and don’t have a win of any significance on their resume, while Penn State has good wins over two ranked ones, Iowa & Michigan. On this basis, you could put Penn above Alabama at this stage. Incidentally, this is also the first time Penn State has been in the top four of the CFP- will they handle the pressure?
Seeing Cincinnati at 20 is a little surprising given Memphis just beat No 25 SMU – this just shows how much the CFP loves Ohio State, as suddenly it seems like the 42-0 beatdown they put on the Bearcats is a “Quality Loss”!
The only other thing we disagree with is putting Oklahoma State in with three losses – given one was to Texas Tech who probably won’t make a bowl game this year. We would probably have slotted UCF in there given their two losses have been by a combined 4 points and one was to Cincinnati, which if we were being facetious could be viewed as a quality loss given the Ohio State link.
On a brighter note, they have put Five Group of Five teams in but none rank higher than 20.
Anyway, the inaugural 2019 rankings are below and we expect they will change significantly before the season end.
CFP Rankings Entering Week 11
1 Ohio State 8-0
2 LSU 8-0
3 Alabama 8-0
4 Penn State 8-0
5 Clemson 9-0
6 Georgia 7-1
7 Oregon 8-1
8 Utah 8-1
9 Oklahoma 7-1
10 Florida 7-2
11 Auburn 7-2
12 Baylor 8-0
13 Wisconsin 6-2
14 Michigan 7-2
15 Notre Dame 6-2
16 Kansas State 6-2
17 Minnesota 8-0
18 Iowa 6-2
19 Wake Forest 7-1
20 Cincinnati 7-1
21 Memphis 8-1
22 Boise State 7-1
23 Oklahoma State 6-3
24 Navy 7-1
25 SMU 8-1
Image aceshot1/Shutterstock.com
