Week 8 got off to a strong start Friday and has major College Football Playoff implications all this weekend. Throughout Saturday’s slate, will give an updated look at the playoff seeding and matchups. Here’s everything you need to know about the current CFP race:
Update at 8 p.m. ET Saturday:
Everywhere you looked in college football during Week 8, carnage appeared.
After starting the weekend with 11 undefeated teams, the sport made it to the prime-time games with only five programs sans a blemish on their records. The chaos was particularly relevant at the top of the sport, with a quartet of Top 10 teams falling from the ranks and at least one in the top 11 guaranteed to join them by the end of the night.
As a result, the playoff picture looks far different from what it did this morning. Can you talk yourself into Diego Pavia trying to go into the Grove to come out with a win and a trip to the Rose Bowl? That’s how wild things are.
Perhaps the most punishing loss was Texas Tech’s loss on the road at Arizona State. While others like Mississippi and Miami can probably survive their losses without much of a penalty, that was one of the few opportunities the Red Raiders had to go out and get a quality (albeit not a ranked) win in Big 12 play. There were mitigating circumstances with starting quarterback Behren Morton out—which the committee will factor in—but the résumé is thin for a team that simply did not test itself during nonconference play. Joey McGuire’s team still looks like the class of the league but they can’t lose another and expect to make it to Arlington, Texas, at this point and might not be in the running for any kind of at-large as we sneak past the halfway mark of the season.
Update at 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday:
Folks, it’s time to start talking about Vanderbilt and its swaggering quarterback Diego Pavia making the College Football Playoff. It speaks to expectations around Nashville that simply becoming bowl eligible with a win over LSU—just the second win over the Tigers in this author’s lifetime—is being glossed over as the team suddenly looks like a real contender for a much more lofty postseason destination in the very near future.
That’s not just a massive thing for Vandy either as its impressive play should continue to further boost the case of several other teams in the league—particularly Alabama but potentially Texas down the road (the Longhorns host the Dores on Nov. 1).
A sign of things to come this weekend? There were a slew of college football games kicking off on Friday night and several sure had a significant impact on the CFP race with Louisville pulling the upset at Miami and Nebraska looking lifeless on the road at Minnesota (denying several Big Ten teams another Top 25 win). The loss to the Cardinals doesn’t wreck the Hurricanes’ chances at making the CFP by any stretch, but it sure knocks them out of a potential bye—which would be a home game at the Orange Bowl—and would set up a likely quarterfinal against an SEC team instead of a more favorable draw.
Meanwhile, the Big Ten will likely need a few more upsets in order to get another team (Illinois, Michigan or Washington being most likely) back into the Top 25 for the purposes of having another quality win on the schedule for the league. Three teams remain inside the top 10, but right now it’s looking like an uphill climb to secure four bids, which opens the door for the SEC to snag as many as five spots in the playoff.
