The newest College Football Playoff rankings are out. Sorry, Cincinnati!
The first iteration of the ratings that will ultimately determine 2021’s national champion placed the Bearcats, No. 2 in the AP Top 25, all the way down at sixth. Their crime? Playing in the AAC.
Cincinnati has dispensed with every obstacle in its path and remains the “1” in 10th-ranked Notre Dame’s 7-1 record. Still, a resume devoid of other ranked opponents means it does not control its own destiny on the road to a four-team playoff. It remains to be seen whether speculative future wins over SMU (in the regular season) or Houston (in the AAC title game) would move the needle. Given both 7-1 teams are unranked by the committee, the answer is probably a firm no.
This is absurd. Unless the four-team playoff is angling for its own destruction — and since this is college football we can all agree there is no angle too ridiculous to be considered — the establishment is sending a clear message. Vanderbilt and Kansas have a better chance of making it to the playoff in any given year than Cincinnati, or UCF, or Houston, simply because their preseason odds aren’t zero.
Maybe the point is to create outrage for a ranking that rarely holds up by the tail end of a chaotic football season. Maybe it’s a not-so-subtle endorsement for an expanded playoff field and the television revenue that would come with it. Or maybe it’s part of a larger conspiracy to push rising coaches like Luke Fickell to Power 5 positions before eventually spinning that group into its own Super League. All we know is that, as of Week 10, it’s absolutely brutal for Cincinnati and anyone else attempting to climb from the primordial ooze of the Group of 5.
Anyway, Week 10 is here and the Bearcats get to play angry. Let’s talk about it. All lines are provided by Tipico Sportsbook.
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