COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF RANKINGS WEEK 12

Despite Baylor’s head-to-head victory over TCU the Horned Frogs remained ahead of the Bears in Tuesday’s College Football Playoff Rankings. TCU moved into the Playoff with the #4 spot and Baylor jumped from 12th to 7th in this weeks rankings. “For the third consecutive week, the committee looked at the overall body of work, their strength of schedule, and looked at the number of top 25 wins,” committee chairman Jeff Long said. “TCU has two top 25 wins and Baylor has one. And TCU’s loss is a top-10 loss. When you put all those factors together, we still think at this time TCU has a better resume and was voted that way ahead of Baylor. “

Oregon was the highest ranked one loss team this week as the Ducks moved up to 2nd, jumping undefeated Florida State which was surprising to some people, including me. The Ducks now have three wins against teams currently in the top 25 (Michigan State, UCLA,Utah). Florida State has beaten two teams in the top 25 (Notre Dame and Clemson). “It was a very close call, but the committee placed significant value on Oregon’s quality of wins against three top 25 teams, two of which were on the road,” Long said.

Alabama remained at No. 5 and Mississippi State, who is undefeated remained at Number 1 for the third straight week. The two face off on Saturday. Arizona State moved up to the sixth spot, if the Sun Devils ended up winning out they would face off in the Pac-12 championship game against now number two Oregon.

If Baylor and TCU both won out, Baylor would be the conference champion and the selection committee  has said conference champions would be one of the biggest factors. Non-conference scheduling is one of the main reasons Baylor is behind TCU. The Bears played Buffalo and SMU and FBS competition while the Horned Frogs faced ranked Minnesota and SMU. “I think that our rankings will send the message,” Long said. “We as a committee are not charged with sending messages to coaches and ADs about scheduling, but I think it’s likely that they will see the factors that we take into account and will take a message from that. But we’re not trying to send a message about that. We’ve said from the beginning, strength of schedule, total body of work, complete resume, all of those are factored into this decision to get to the best four teams and rank our 25.”

Ohio State moved up 8 spots from No. 16 after a win over Michigan State, becoming the highest ranked Big Ten team. Auburn dropped to 9th from 3rd after losing at home to Texas A&M.