CFP Rankings Reaction: How did Michigan State get passed by Michigan?

The second edition of the CFP rankings were released on Tuesday and the committee made a strange decision putting Michigan in front of Michigan State.

This isn’t a new phenomenon or anything but the College Football Playoff selection committee doesn’t seem to put much stock in its own rules.

Head-to-head results are supposed to matter. It’s right up there with win-loss record, conference championships, and all the rest.

In college football, there aren’t that many times when things are decided on the field so when two playoff contenders meet, the winner should get the nod from the committee.

All things considered, that’s how it should work.

So you can understand Michigan State football fans being a little miffed that Michigan jumped the Spartans despite MSU’s win over Michigan less than two weeks ago. The committee made some interesting comments about that too.

Michigan State football beat the Wolverines 37-33 in a really exciting football game. There was some controversy regarding the officiating and according to Jim Harbaugh, the Big Ten said it made a mistake when it overturned what would have been a defensive TD for the Wolverines.

But unless the committee is taking poor officiating into account — by which case there are many, many, many things to discuss — the ranking of Michigan State football as No. 7 and Michigan sixth is really hard to justify.

Trying to make sense of CFP Rankings going into Week 11

Yes, the Wolverines loss is technically better than Michigan State’s. But the Spartans lost to a team now ranked in the top 20 (Purdue). Michigan lost to the No. 7 team but do the Wolverines really get credit for a better loss…at least enough to jump the team it just lost to?

Just reading (or typing) that sentence is enough to make your head spin.

The rest of the top five made perfect sense. Georgia and Alabama are going to be No. 1 and No. 2 until proven otherwise.

Some said Alabama should drop because of a close win over LSU but Oregon didn’t necessarily dominate Washington and Ohio State certainly didn’t breeze through Nebraska.

So all those teams were treated the same. Michigan beat Indiana by 22 points and Cincinnati needed two goal-line stands in the last minute to fend off an upset by Tulsa (3-6).

That explains why the Bearcats are fifth and unlikely to move into the top four unless chaos reigns, which it very well could.

And for Michigan State fans up in arms: don’t worry.

You still control your own destiny to get into the top four. If the Spartans beat Ohio State and win the Big Ten championship they would, rightfully, jump the Wolverines.

Just the win at OSU would be enough to do that.

So yes the committee screwed up, and likely because Michigan has only trailed for about five minutes all season and they are obsessed with game control, it really likes the Wolverines, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Spartans control their own destiny, more than Michigan does and for that matter, Cincinnati.