Saturday Blitz
Fansided

College Football Playoff 2017: New Year’s Six Projections entering Week 9

By Andrew Hammond

PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 02: A general view during the 2017 Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual between the USC Trojans and the Penn State Nittany Lions at the Rose Bowl on January 2, 2017 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 02: A general view during the 2017 Rose Bowl Game presented by Northwestern Mutual between the USC Trojans and the Penn State Nittany Lions at the Rose Bowl on January 2, 2017 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
2 of 6
Next
(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) /

Playstation Fiesta Bowl

Playstation Fiesta Bowl: Notre Dame (at-large) vs. Wisconsin (at-large)
Where: University of Phenix Stadium (Glendale, Ariz.)
When: Dec. 30 at 4:00 p.m. ET on ESPN
Last week’s projection: Washington vs. Wisconsin

Is it time to believe in Notre Dame? As someone who is a fan of the Irish, albeit a pessimistic one I think there is some smoke to the fire that is, “Notre Dame might actually be good”. After slapping around USC this past week, the Fighting Irish find themselves in the Fiesta Bowl against Wisconsin just a week before the first CFP rankings are released.

Notre Dame over the past few weeks has joined Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Clemson and Ohio State as teams who have one loss on the season but are in position to make a case for a possible NY6 bid. The Irish still have NC State, Miami and Stanford on the schedule which should be enough to surpass a few of those other one loss teams if Notre Dame can win out.

Over the past few weeks, undefeated teams that aren’t in the top four have been up for discussion. One of those teams is the Wisconsin Badgers who are currently 7-0 and ranked fifth in the nation. I know that the fine folks of Madison, Wisconsin will be sending me hate mail and hate tweets along the way but with the lack of good wins and two Big Ten schools in front of them, the Badgers are sitting third in the Big Ten pecking order when it comes to who I think will be slotted where going into the ninth week of the season.

Week 9 outlook

Both Notre Dame and Wisconsin have a chance to create some real movement when it comes to the Week 10 projections and even the first CFP ranking that comes out on Halloween. Notre Dame has another ranked opponent this week in NC State and Wisconsin has back to back road games with Illinois and Indiana. Penn State and Ohio State playing this week gives the chance for Wisconsin to possibly make some movement into the Orange Bowl, regardless of the outcome between the Lions and Buckeyes.

Home/College Football Playoff