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You know exactly what happened: CFP Top 25 Released

But there’s other stupid stuff!

By MNWildcat
Oklahoma v Ohio State Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

No real surprises, but we now know the rooting interests up and down the Big Ten landscape for bowl seeding and scenarios. Check out our bowl projections from earlier today, if you haven’t already!

Anyway, the usual weekly navel-gazing of College Football Playoff rankings has begun anew, and we’re happy to be your home for that.

The Top 25:

[25] Fresno State Bulldogs
[24] Missouri Tigers
[23] Iowa St. Cyclones
[22] Boise State Broncos

[21] Northwestern Wildcats

[20] Syracuse Orange
[19] Texas A&M Aggies
[18] Mississippi St. Bulldogs
[17] Utah Utes
[16] West Virginia Mountaineers
[15] Kentucky Wildcats
[14] Texas Longhorns
[13] Washington State Cougars

[12] Penn State Nittany Lions

[11] Washington Huskies

[10] LSU Tigers
[9] Florida Gators
[8] UCF Knights

[7] Michigan Wolverines
[6] Ohio State Buckeyes

[5] Oklahoma Sooners
[4] Georgia Bulldogs
[3] Notre Dame Fighting Irish
[2] Clemson Tigers
[1] Alabama Crimson Tide

B1G Talking Points:

  • It’s exactly what we thought for Ohio State: Beat Northwestern by enough in the Big Ten Championship, and hope Oklahoma fails to impress or outright loses to Texas.
  • Of course, that’s moot if Georgia beats Alabama in the SEC Championship. I expect we’ll see the Bulldogs playing Notre Dame in some combination of a 2-3 game, with Clemson-Bama making up the other semifinal. That is dumb, I do not care, and it could absolve me completely from watching the CFP. Go Dwags.
  • Enjoy the Rose Bowl, Michigan. Unless you’d rather see Northwestern there, which we’re totally fine with, in which case would you rather beat Florida or UCF?
  • Really, the only team this is exciting for is Penn State: The Lions can absolutely make the New Year’s Six bowls, but they need some help. Why? Because Texas, even with a loss to Oklahoma in the Big XII Championship game, would be locked into the Sugar Bowl (or West Virginia jumps the Longhorns if Texas loses by enough, I guess). But a team outside the Top 12 jumping into an NY6 bumps the 12th team in the rankings—Penn State.
  • Got all that? Good. The Nittany Lions, if they’d prefer an NY6 bowl, have a narrow road: That Ohio State makes the CFP, but that Oklahoma beats Texas by a narrow margin (because a Texas win would leave both Big XII teams in the Top 12, bumping Penn State).

These rankings are, of course, not the be-all, end-all of college football—as we noted in our Bowl Projections today, there’s a lot of fun left to be had across the college football landscape, and most of it wasn’t preordained by polls that also had wisconsin as the 4th-best team in the nation!

Check those out, enjoy the silliness of Northwestern being a Top 25 team, and buckle up for a weird Big Ten Championship Week.