Projected 2020 College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings for Week 14
By Zach Bigalke
Thanksgiving weekend offered some food for thought for the College Football Playoff selection committee. What will their Top 25 look like for Week 14 play?
When the College Football Playoff selection committee released its inaugural Top 25 rankings on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, it revealed the thought processes of the selectors for the first time this season. There were certainly some surprises, as the committee valued some teams and conferences (such as the Big 12) more highly than AP voters and coaches have so far this season. Others (such as Pac-12 teams and BYU) were devalued by the committee compared to the major human polls.
Black Friday and the final Saturday of the month allowed the committee to reevaluate its hierarchy. Not everyone ranked in the first Top 25 from the committee had the chance to play, however. In addition to scheduled idle weekends at Miami and Marshall, a half-dozen other programs were sidelined by COVID-19 protocols. That included Ohio State, who announced late Friday night that their Saturday showdown at Illinois could not go on as planned.
OTHER TEAMS UNDER CONSIDERATION BY COMMITTEE
- 3-0 Colorado
- 4-0 Buffalo
- 5-0 Nevada
- 9-1 Liberty
How the College Football Playoff accounts for the vagaries of unbalanced schedules, last-minute cancellations and postponements, and the dearth of intersectional play for the purposes of comparison will continue to evolve over the next few weeks. Conference championship pictures are starting to solidify, which will potentially prove an even more critical data point this year given the circumstances.
There were a couple of losses that will inevitably shake up the rankings this week, as teams like Northwestern suffered upsets and Top 25 matchups in the SEC, ACC, and Big 12 all helped to shuffle the deck.
With a better idea of who the selection committee favors this year and who they continue to be skeptical about, let’s dive in and project where teams will land in the College Football Playoff Top 25 ahead of Week 14 play now that Thanksgiving results are in the books.