The second College Football Rankings for week 11 are out, with Oregon remaining in the top 10 and moving up a spot to #8:
The top five teams stayed unchanged. The most significant games in terms of creating poll movement were Texas Tech’s win over BYU in a top ten matchup — that moved the Red Raiders up to #6 and dropped the Cougars to #12, pulling up the five teams immediately behind BYU including Oregon — and the two
ACC upsets which dropped Virginia and Louisville to #19 and #20 respectively while allowing Vanderbilt, Miami, Georgia Tech, USC, and Michigan to all climb a couple of spots.
In assessing how the committee views the conferences, the big falloffs for the Big XII and ACC losers, while Iowa only fell a single rank for its loss to Oregon, cements the view that the committee sees the SEC and Big Ten as the “Super 2” and the other two ostensible Power conferences as also-rans. With Notre Dame and a Group of Five champion likely taking up a couple of spots, it will probably be difficult for the Big XII and ACC to get more than just their conference champions into the playoffs, barring some real November chaos. The question is just whether it’s a 3/5 or 4/4 split between the SEC and Big Ten … and if it’s unbalanced, which way.
For Oregon’s strength of schedule, Iowa remaining ranked despite the loss is a good sign, as is future opponent USC climbing the rankings – it means that regardless of what happens in this coming week’s Iowa-USC contest, Oregon will have a good outcome on its sheet. Indiana remaining so high as the notorious “quality loss” is a good sign as well. As much as it warms any right-thinking person’s heart, Washington losing to benighted Wisconsin is probably a net loss for the Ducks’ resume: even though the Badgers were a win for the Ducks, their win does very little to make them look better while doing a lot to make the Huskies look worse. UW dropped out of the rankings this week.
Oregon currently has a 75% chance of making the playoffs, according to FanDuel.
