Projected 2020 College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings for Week 16

Indiana’s game against Purdue was called off in Week 15 due to rising COVID-19 numbers in both the Hoosiers and Boilermakers programs. For the first time since the Spanish flu pandemic coursed through the United States in 1918 and 1919, the two schools will not meet for the Old Oaken Bucket. That shouldn’t have much impact on Indiana’s place in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s Top 25 rankings.

More distressing than the loss of the rivalry game for Hoosiers fans was the Big Ten’s decision to reverse its policy on requiring teams to play at least six games to qualify for the conference championship. That allowed Ohio State to qualify for the title game despite playing only five games to date. (Of course, one of those five games was a takedown of Indiana… so Hoosiers fans cannot be too upset by the league decision.)

Indiana will have one more game to play against [Iowa/Wisconsin] in Week 16 when the Big Ten pits the two second-place teams from each division against one another. That will provide the selection committee another data point against a Top 25 team as they debate whether to put the Hoosiers into a New Year’s Six bowl game.