College Football Playoff Rankings Predictions: Oklahoma in Over Ohio State

Getty Ohio State faces an uphill battle to be selected for the College Football Playoff.

The college football regular season has come to a close and the final College Football Playoff rankings will be unveiled on Sunday at 12 p.m. Eastern. Oklahoma, Ohio State, Georgia and UCF are thought to be the only four teams in contention for the final playoff spot.

The top two teams all won over the weekend meaning Alabama, Clemson and Notre Dame are all expected to hold onto the top three spots. The one thing to watch is what the committee does with Notre Dame not playing in a conference title game. Given the Irish started the weekend at No. 3, Notre Dame is still likely to make the playoff, but the committee could rank three teams ahead of them that won a conference title.

Here’s how the playoff committee defines the selection criteria for the top four teams per the playoff website.

The selection committee ranks the teams based on the members’ evaluation of the teams’ performance on the field, using conference championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head results, and comparison of results against common opponents to decide among teams that are comparable.

Oklahoma entered the weekend ranked ahead of Ohio State and got a win over a higher ranked opponent. The Buckeyes’ blowout loss to Purdue is likely too much to overcome. Here’s how College Football Playoff chair Rob Mullens described the conversation about
Oklahoma and Ohio State.

Both of them played TCU away from home. That’s pretty consistent, I would say with comparable results. Very similar there. The first part of the question, again, you look at Oklahoma, you see their only loss is to a ranked Texas team at a neutral site, impressive road wins against ranked West Virginia, ranked Ohio State. You line that up against Ohio State with a loss against Purdue, then obviously an incredibly impressive win versus Michigan last week, then a quality road win over
Penn State. That’s how you start to line it up. Here’s a look at my final predictions for the College Football Playoff rankings.

There has been some campaigning for Georgia to make the playoff after their narrow loss to Alabama in the conference title game. This seems unlikely given the Bulldogs have two losses and Georgia making the playoff would be a rematch of the SEC title game.

Here’s a look at my final predictions for the College Football Playoff rankings and New Year’s Six bowl games.

College Football Playoff Semifinals: Cotton & Orange Bowl

Cotton Bowl: No. 1 Alabama vs. No. 4 Oklahoma
Orange Bowl: No. 2 Clemson vs. No. 3 Notre Dame

College Football New Year’s Six Games

Peach Bowl: Michigan vs. Florida
Fiesta Bowl: UCF vs. LSU

College Football Playoff Rankings Prediction