College Football Playoff Standings 2015: Week 8 Rankings, Bowl Game Projections
By Bryan Fischer, National College Football Columnist
Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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Week 7 of the season was billed as Separation Saturday by some, and that didn’t turn out to be hyperbole when Sunday morning rolled around across the country.
The script in many conference races was flipped, several surprising upsets happened, and a number of closer-than-expected games turned out to be laughers. And let us not forget that one team only needed 10 seconds left in order to capture a victory.
Keep all that in mind as we enter a Week 8 slate that doesn’t have all that many enticing matchups but still presents the opportunity for some teams to get back in the College Football Playoff race or fall out for good.
Buckle up, folks: The season is on the downslope and it’s rolling along quite quickly.
Now on to the bowl projections. A hearty disclaimer that these are projecting out the rest of the season and as such are not completely reflective of the state of college football at the moment.
- Here are the full Top 25 rankings. The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first rankings in just over two weeks, on Nov. 3 at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
- After that "Separation Saturday," we saw a pretty big shake-up among the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six teams. The biggest change involves a conference being shut out of the final four that would have one part of the country up in arms and likely delight the rest. Yes, the SEC is out of the playoff. It is entirely possible the league’s champion has two losses by the end of the year, and while that may not completely eliminate the SEC from the playoff, it does present an uphill battle. Alabama looks again to be the top dog but it remains in the realm of possibilities that the Tide would have just a single Top 10 win (at Texas A&M) and only one other Top 20 victory (LSU) by the end of the year depending on how things shake out. A loss to Ole Miss isn’t looking too hot either. While the team has flashed at times, there are still quite a few holes on both sides of the ball (and special teams) to not be quite sold on Alabama.
- Baylor continues to look unstoppable and will remain in the top spot until its two-game season (against Oklahoma and at TCU) concludes. Ohio State is starting to hit its stride and Clemson also remains on track to go undefeated. That’s three spots pretty much locked in unless something crazy happens between now and late November.
- The fourth spot is where things get interesting. Based on its strong play in recent weeks, a case can be made that Stanford is playing as well as anybody in the country. The Cardinal have just two remaining road games left and have opportunities to capture quality victories down the stretch against Cal, Notre Dame (which may turn into a play-in game) and possibly undefeated Utah. Alabama may still win the SEC, but if Stanford closes things out like they could, it will be hard to keep them out of the final four.
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