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Keeping track of all the ranked games, Playoff committee-style.
Week 7’s college football schedule has a few really meaningful games, but what might be even better is the relative lack of meaningless games. Almost every top-25 team is getting some kind of challenge.
Below, we’re keeping track of each top-25 game’s impact, both before and after final scores, mostly paying attention to CFB committee stuff, not highlights or fun plays.
Remember the things the committee has mostly demonstrated it rewards: wins over final top-25 teams, wins over bowl teams, road wins, dominant wins, weirdly excusable losses, being Alabama, and not being a mid-major. It does not care what your opponent’s AP ranking was at kickoff.
All rankings AP, for now. All days Saturday, and all times p.m. ET. Final scores in bold.
Probably important
Games in which the winning team will likely have a pretty high-quality Week 7 victory by season’s end.
- No. 2 Georgia (6-0) at No. 13 LSU (5-1), 3:30, CBS: Probably UGA’s hardest game until Alabama in the SEC Championship. A home upset by the Tigers would put them in fantastic New Year’s Six shape and make Alabama-LSU loom way larger than it probably should.
- No. 7 Washington (5-1) at No. 17 Oregon (4-1), 3:30, ABC/ESPN2: Not to be dramatic, but this might be the Pac-12’s last stand. I don’t think anyone buys the idea of the Ducks or Colorado winning out, so the Huskies winning a pretty tough rivalry game on the road a week after being tested at UCLA has some real peril to it.
- No. 12 Michigan (5-1) vs. No. 15 Wisconsin (4-1), 7:30, ABC: Ohio State and its shaky defense have been anointed, but the winner here has to be considered a legit Big Ten challenger.
Maybe important
Games in which the winner will probably have beaten a decent bowl team. I’m being somewhat generous to a few of these unranked teams, as far as chances of making a bowl go.
- No. 1 Alabama (6-0) vs. Missouri (3-2), 7, ESPN: Complaints about Bama’s (fine, at this point) strength of schedule will continue, but mostly because Mizzou doesn’t play a ton of defense. The Tigers are pretty good.
- No. 3 Ohio State (7-0) 30, Minnesota (3-3) 14: Not as impressive as the score looks ... and the score doesn’t even look impressive!
- No. 5 Notre Dame (6-0) vs. Pitt (3-3), 2:30, NBC: Can the masters of the wildly overmatched rivalry upset knock out yet an other rival?
- No. 8 Penn State (4-1) vs. Michigan State (3-2), FS1
- No. 9 Texas (5-1) vs. Baylor (4-2), 3:30, ESPN: The polls are quite a bit higher on the Horns this week than the computers are.
- No. 14 Florida (6-1) 37, Vanderbilt (3-4) 27: That score looks pretty normal, but it was anything but. Whatever. Counts as a road win against a maybe OK team all the same.
- No. 16 Miami (5-1) at Virginia (3-2), 7, ESPN2
- No. 19 Colorado (5-0) at USC (3-2), 10:30, FS1: The winner’s gotta be considered your Pac-12 South favorite.
- No. 22 Texas A&M (4-2) at South Carolina (3-2), 3:30, SECN
- Tennessee (3-3) 30, No. 21 Auburn (4-3) 24: Auburn becomes the year’s first preseason top-10 team to leave the rankings, putting the Tigers in contention for most unpredictable team YET AGAIN, a metric in which they already ranked No. 1 all time by far.
Important for the Group of 5 race
Since the committee’s essentially showed non-power teams aren’t eligible for the Playoff, let’s have a separate section for the race to be the top-ranked mid-major champ. This isn’t necessarily exhaustive, but it’s a good list for this week.
- No. 10 UCF (5-0) at Memphis (4-2), 3:30, ABC/ESPN2: Probably one of only three especially tough tests remaining for UCF, along with USF and a theoretical AAC title game.
- No. 23 USF (6-0) 25, Tulsa (1-5) 24
- No. 25 Cincinnati (6-0): Idle
- Appalachian State (4-1) 35, Arkansas State (3-3) 9: Listed here mainly because S&P+ loves the Mountaineers, who should probably be ranked.
- Fresno State (4-1) vs. Wyoming (2-4), 1:30, ESPNU
- Houston (4-1) at East Carolina (2-3), 7, CBSSN
- San Diego State (5-1) 21, Air Force (2-4) 17
- Utah State (4-1) vs. UNLV (2-3), 4, Stadium
Probably not important
The committee doesn’t really care about wins vs. teams with final losing records and so forth. These underdogs could still bowl, of course.
- No. 6 West Virginia (5-0) at Iowa State (2-3)