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Commentary: Ducks move up to No. 3 spot (really?) in College Football Playoff rankings

by Doug Bates | Nov 12, 2021 | Commentary, Featured Sidebar, Sports

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By LLOYD PASEMAN/For The Herald — The only thing more surprising than 8-1 Oregon being ranked as the No. 4 football team in the nation on Nov. 2 is that they moved up a notch to the No. 3 spot in Tuesday’s second weekly rankings by the College Football Playoff selection committee. Georgia repeated as No. 1, Alabama as No. 2 and Ohio State, whom the Ducks defeated 35-28 on Sept. 11 in Columbus, is No. 4.

The Ducks’ rankings were surprises because only three of Oregon’s eight wins this year have been against teams that have been included in the Associated Press Top 25 college football rankings at least once this season (the AP poll is separate from the CFP rankings and, unlike the CFP poll, begins with the start of the season).

Oregon Ducks football,college playoff rankings,lloyd pasemanGraphic by FiveThirtyEight

And five of Oregon’s eight wins—against Fresno State, Ohio State, California, UCLA and Washington—were decided by 10 points or less. The Ducks have breezed to victory only three times in nine games, against 4-5 second-tier Stony Brook, 1-8 Arizona and 3-6 Colorado.

In its latest projection FiveThirtyEight, a website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics and sports blogging, gives Oregon a 50 percent chance of winning the Pac-12 title for the third year in a row, a 37 percent of making it into the CFP and only a 4 percent chance of winning the national title.

On Dec. 5, the CFP committee will release its final Top 25 rankings. The first four teams will square off in a pair of semifinal bowl games on Dec. 31 and the winners of those two games will meet in the national championship game on Jan. 10.

Will Oregon still be ranked among the top four teams come Dec. 5? Time will tell but the odds at this point seem to be that they will not.

After defeating the Washington Huskies 26-16 last Saturday in Seattle, the Ducks have three games remaining in the regular season—against the Washington State Cougars at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Eugene, against the Utah Utes Nov. 20 in Salt Lake City, and against their in-state rival Oregon State Beavers on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

One of the criteria the 13-member CFP selection committee uses to make its rankings is a team’s “strength of schedule,” that is, how good were its opponents this season? It also takes into consideration conference championships, team records, player injuries, even the weather, and “head-to-head” results, or how well one ranked team performed against another ranked team.

Unlike other polls, the CFP doesn’t use computer rankings to make its choices and although advanced statistics are available to committee members, those numbers have no formal role in the committee’s decisions. Also, committee members are not required to attend any football games.

Some observers say strength of schedule is one of the committee’s main criteria for ranking teams and that’s one of Oregon’s biggest weaknesses.

The Ducks beat Fresno State (ranked 22nd in the AP poll on Sept. 25) 31-24 in Eugene on Sept. 4; defeated No. 3 (now ranked 6th) Ohio State 35-28 in Columbus on Sept. 11, and edged UCLA 34-31 in Pasadena on Sept. 25. The Bruins were ranked 13th on Sept. 18, 24th on Sept. 25 and 20th on Oct. 2 before dropping out of the Top 25.

Because Pac-12 teams play non-conference games at the start of the season, Oregon plays only nine of the other 11 teams in the conference this year. The two teams not on the Ducks’ 2021 schedule—Arizona State and USC—are among its strongest. They have been included five times and twice, respectively, in the AP poll thus far (ASU 25th on Sept. 1, 23rd on Sept. 11, 19th on Sep. 18, 22nd on Oct. 8 and 18th on Oct. 16, and USC 15th on Sept. 4 and 14th on Sept. 11).

While Oregon started near the top in the CFP rankings, which began Nov. 2, the Ducks have made a jerky climb in the AP poll, starting at No. 11 before their first game against Fresno State on Sep. 4, leaping to No. 4 and then No. 3 after defeating Ohio State, then falling toward the bottom of the Top 10 after losing to Stanford 31-24 in overtime on Oct. 2. Back-to-back victories over Colorado and Washington have lifted them into No. 5 this week.

Of the three teams remaining on Oregon’s schedule, only Utah has made it into the AP Top 25, ranked 24th in the pre-season poll and 21st on Sept. 4. And it showed up as No. 24 in the CFP’s rankings this week. It and Oregon have identical 5-1 records in the Pac-12, with Oregon leading the North division and Utah the South.

The Ducks’ other remaining opponents, Washington State and Oregon State, are second and third in the Pac-12 North.

The Pac-12 championship game is Friday, Dec. 3. Barring any upsets between now and then, it appears the Ducks will win the North division championship and Utah the South division, in which case Oregon would end up playing Utah twice in the space of two weeks.

And while the Ducks’ remaining games may prove tougher to win than most of their games since Sept. 11, consider what the other top-ranked CFP teams are facing (we won’t talk about Georgia, which is 9-0 and appears to have a lock on the No. 1 spot):

No. 2 Alabama should easily trounce its next opponent, New Mexico State, before meeting No. 25 Arkansas, and then plays No. 16 Auburn before the Dec. 4 SEC championship game, where it likely would meet No. 1 Georgia.

No. 4 Ohio State plays No. 16 Purdue before taking on No. 8 Michigan State and No. 9 Michigan before the Dec. 4 Big Ten championship game. The Buckeyes are leading the B10 East division but have to get past the two Michigan schools to reach the title game. Wisconsin, although currently tied for the B10 West lead with Minnesota, Purdue and Iowa, is expected to face the B10 East winner for the championship.

And undefeated No. 8 Oklahoma, also 9-0 and ranked No. 4 in the AP poll, still has Baylor, Iowa State and Oklahoma State to play—the three teams with the next-best Big 12 records to Oklahoma’s—before that conference’s championship game, also on Dec. 4.

Not yet mentioned is Cincinnati, which is also 9-0. The Bearcats are the only team in the Top 10, in both the CFP and AP rankings, that is not in one of the Power Five conferences (Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12), which is considered to be the elite among the 130 NCAA top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Rather, Cincinnati is part of the less-regarded Group of Five (American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-Atlantic Conference, Mountain West Conference and Sun Belt Conference).

The Bearcats are currently ranked No. 2 in the AP poll but the CFP committee put them in the No. 5 spot in Tuesday’s rankings. Exactly where Cincinnati fits in this year’s playoff discussion has been the subject of extended debate, with some questioning whether the Bearcats even belong in the Top Ten, noting that although they upset vaunted Notre Dame 24-13 on Oct. 2, eight of their regular season games are with AAC opponents.

USA Today reporter Eric Smith has predicted that the final four CFP teams will pit Georgia and Cincinnati in one semifinal game and Oklahoma and Ohio State in the other.

Oregon, Smith projects, will have to be content with playing in the Rose Bowl—one of 42 college football bowl games between Dec. 17 (the Bahamas Bowl in Nassau) and Jan. 4 (the Texas Bowl in Houston)—on New Year’s Day, probably against Penn State.

He may end up being right. In my view the Ducks have won too many games against inferior opponents by too thin a margin this season. They might be worthy of a spot in the Top 10, but they haven’t yet shown enough consistency to warrant a spot in the CFP. A lot of their players are young and if they can find a quality QB among the three freshmen who’ve gotten virtually no playing time this season (head coach Mario Cristobal has insisted on playing Boston College senior transfer Anthony Brown almost exclusively), they should be a much-improved team next year and a legitimate candidate with a shot at next season’s national championship.

 

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Written by Doug Bates

November 12, 2021

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