Yawn.
For now.
Which isn’t a bad place for a 10-1 Notre Dame football team to be, heading into its final opportunity to impress the College Football Playoff selection committee, Saturday at USC (6-5).
The intrigue will come, if the No. 5 Irish and No. 4 Penn State (10-1) both win on Saturday, in the form of this rumination: Would a more-convincing Notre Dame win against the Trojans Saturday than Penn State’s 33-30 overtime escape on Oct. 12 be enough to coax a ratings/seedings flip-flop between the two?
And one spot could matter a lot in the rankings, seedings and playoff pathways — all or which are subject to fluctuations until the final sets are firmed up on Dec. 8, with a pairings/seedings gabfest on ESPN scheduled to start at noon EST.
The newest snapshot was delayed by a poky men’s college basketball game, then finally revealed Tuesday night on ESPN.
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“There was a lot of discussion about those teams and how they had performed,” Michigan athletic director and selection committee chair Warde Manuel said via teleconference Tuesday night of ND and the Nittany Lions.
“Penn State's only loss is to the No. 2 team in the country [Ohio State]. They have a win over No. 23 Illinois. Notre Dame has a win now over No. 20 Texas A&M [and], as of today, Army is not in the rankings.
“Notre Dame's loss was to Northern Illinois at the beginning of the year, but they won nine straight games in pretty dominant fashion since then. So, from our standpoint, résumés are pretty close in terms of how we see them, obviously with them ranked 4 and 5.
“So, we'll be watching how they perform, and we will start assessing when we get together on Monday to look at what's transpired over the weekend.”
As of Tuesday, the new rankings looked unsurprisingly like this: 1. Oregon (11-0), 2. Ohio State (10-1), 3. Texas (10-1) ahead of the Nittany Lions and the Irish. Then came 6. Miami (10-1), 7. Georgia (9-2), 8. Tennessee (9-2), 9. SMU (10-1), 10. Indiana (10-1), 11. Boise State (10-1) and 12. Clemson (9-2).
Of those teams, only Notre Dame and Tennessee are guaranteed NOT to be playing on conference championship weekend (Dec. 6-7), though several other teams will eventually join them on the sidelines, based on this weekend’s results.
Penn State, incidentally, hosts Maryland (4-7) on Saturday.
But because the top five highest-ranked conference champs automatically qualify for the 12-team field and the top four are seeded 1 through 4, Penn State and Notre Dame are seeded 6 and 7, respectively, in the latest bracket projection.
Teams seeded 5-8 host first-round games Dec. 20 or 21 against teams 9-12. Teams 1-4, the highest-four ranked conference champs, get a bye into the Dec. 31/Jan. 1 quarterfinals held at bowl sites.
The semis are set for Jan 9-10, also at bowl sites, with the championship game set for Jan. 20 in Atlanta.
So, in Tuesday night’s freeze frame, the Nittany Lions’ path to the semis would be a home game against a Big Ten team it didn’t play this season, 11 seed Indiana, then ACC champ and 3 seed Miami, which still has potentially two games left to try to lock up that distinction.
The 7 seed ND, meanwhile, gets 10 seed SMU in this bracket projection and then likely the SEC champ, currently 2 seed Texas projected in that spot.
The good news for Notre Dame, in moving out of the 8 seed where it was placed last week, is not having to play the No. 1 seed potentially until the championship game.
Notre Dame twice made the College Football Playoff in the 10 years it had a four-team format, losing in the semis each time, in 2018 and 2020.
The next CFP rankings reveal show is Tuesday night at 7 EST on ESPN.
Power 4 Conference Championship Game scenarios
SEC: The winner of Saturday’s game between Texas and host Texas A&M (8-3) gets Georgia Dec. 7 in the title game, with that winner getting a top 4 seed. So yes, the 20th-ranked Aggies could still make the playoff field AND be seeded higher than the Irish, if they do win out.
ACC: SMU is in the title game. If Miami can knock off Syracuse (8-3), the Hurricanes play the Mustangs for the title. If Miami loses, Clemson plays SMU.
Big Ten: Oregon has clinched. An Ohio State win over Michigan on Saturday, sends the Buckeyes to the title game and a chance to avenge the one-point loss to the Ducks in Eugene earlier this season.
Penn State needs to beat Maryland and it needs Ohio State to lose to Michigan. Indiana, meanwhile, needs to beat Purdue and have the Buckeyes and Nittany Lions both lose to reach the title game. If all three lose, then it’s back to Ohio State getting the berth.
Big 12: The Big 12 told CBS Sports there are 250 different combinations of possibilities, which actually doesn’t seem possible. In any case, the simplest way to look at it, if the four teams currently tied in first place at 6-2 all win this coming weekend, it favors Arizona State (9-2) and Iowa State (9-2) to play for the title over BYU (9-2) and Colorado (8-3).
CFP contenders' remaining regular-season opponents
No. 1 Oregon (11-0): vs. Washington (6-5)
No. 2 Ohio State (10-1): vs. Michigan (6-5)
No. 3 Texas (10-1): vs. at No. 20 Texas A&M (8-3)
No. 4 Penn State (10-1): vs. Maryland (4-7)
No. 5 Notre Dame (10-1): at USC (6-5)
No. 6 Miami: (10-1) vs. Syracuse (8-3)
No. 7 Georgia (9-2): vs. Georgia Tech (7-4)
No. 8 Tennessee (9-2): vs. Vanderbilt (6-5)
No. 9 SMU (10-1): vs. Cal (6-5)
No. 10 Indiana (10-1): vs. Purdue (1-10)
No. 11 Boise State (10-1): vs. Oregon State (5-6)
No. 12 Clemson (9-2): vs. No. 16 South Carolina (8-3)
No. 13 Alabama (8-3): vs. Auburn (5-6)
No. 14 Ole Miss (8-3): vs. Mississippi State (2-9)
No. 15 South Carolina (8-3) at Clemson (9-2)
No. 16 Arizona State (9-2): at Arizona (4-7)
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