The Couch Power 10, Championship Week
Welcome to December, college football fans. While you're all still emotionally recovering from the visits from and goodbyes to your family, and physically recovering from the amount of food you consumed over Thanksgiving, ruminate on this: we're into conference championship week. As in, less than a week from today, we will know the full field of the first-ever 12-team college football playoff. In a blink of an eye, we have just about reached season's end.
And did that fact slow the madness down? Not even a little bit. There was so much madness over the last couple weeks, in fact, that my poor laptop couldn't even keep up and was out of commission for a week, which is why there was no Week 12 Power 10! Fortunately, much like emotionally-charged postgame brawls in rivalry games, me and my computer are so back. Yes, chaos continued to strike the college football world, even up to and through the final week of the season for most teams in America. Two weeks ago, in our last published Power 10, our lead image was from Georgia Tech upsetting Miami. This week, I could have gone with a second straight lead image involving Tech, as they almost toppled another giant in rivals Georgia, before the Dawgs rallied out of nowhere on Black Friday to turn a 14-point deficit with less than 4 minutes remaining into an insane, unlikely and almost inexplicable 8-Overtime victory. I could have also done a second straight lead image involving a Miami loss, for that matter, as the Hurricanes saw their ACC title and quite possibly playoff hopes slip away in another road upset, this one a stunning collapse from a 21-0 lead to a 4-point loss at Syracuse.
My options for main story didn't stop there: I could have gone with one featuring Saturday's primetime and "College Gameday location" game, in which Texas won the first edition of their Texas A&M rivalry in over a decade, quieting the raucous College Station crowd and clinching a berth in the SEC championship in one fell stroke. Or, with the scenes from upstate South Carolina, where the UofSC Gamecocks stunned archrivals Clemson with a late rally in Death Valley, and possibly nosed them out for an at-large playoff bid in the process. But no, Saturday's chief storyline belonged to another heated rivalry-- in fact, THE rivalry in college football. This was supposed to be a fairly pedestrian edition of The Game, with 2nd-ranked Ohio State expected to cruise past a mediocre Michigan side at home, but instead the reigning national champions put on a defensive masterclass, and fought tooth and nail for a shock 13-10 win in Columbus. Michigan's win was one of the more stunning results of this season, and the flag-planting, benches-clearing, mace-spraying brawl that ensued after set the tone for a full day of it.
So! On the eve of the final pre-playoff rankings, here is one last Power 10 to keep a finger on the pulse of the people. One more time, in case you forgot: this is not a definitive ranking on how good the teams are, or on who I think will be/deserves to be in the playoff at the end of the year. Rather, it's more of a "What if preseason rankings and bigwig bias didn't predetermine the top teams" kind of thing, an ideal ranking of the country's teams based on what they've actually proved on the field to date. Don't be mad cuz I'm doin' me better than you doin' you:
1. Oregon
While many a fellow title contender stumbled or survived scares in rivalry weekend, top-ranked Oregon blew out coastal rivals and reigning national runners-up Washington. Contrary to what their long standing as the #1 team might suggest, the Ducks are not an imperfect or unbeatable side, but they are unbeaten, and as unanimous a top team as you're gonna get in a chaotic season like this. They may have dodged a rematch with Ohio State in the Big Ten title, but Penn State will still represent a major opportunity for Oregon to re-announce themselves against a Top 5 opponent.
2. Texas
No team sums up this year's apparent "lotta very good teams, no truly great ones" theme better than Texas. The Longhorns have had all the makings of a title team over the course of this season, but haven't often been able to put that together for an entire game this season. Their two most complete performances came in "big games" against teams that were later exposed as mediocre, Michigan and Oklahoma, and in their sole matchup against a certified top-tier opponent, they got run over by Georgia at home. Still, Texas enters the SEC Championship fresh off winning a 'play-in' game for the conference title in the hostile confines of Aggieland, on a five-game winning streak, and oh yeah, with a chance to avenge their sole loss in the season (and clinch a first-round bye in the process).
3. Notre Dame
The Irish cruised to a winning finish to their 11-1 season with a comfortable win over old rivals USC in L.A. You can split hairs between Notre Dame and Penn State, the two 1-loss major teams without gaping questions about their schedule quality. ESPN rates Penn St's strength of schedule-- and thus strength of record --higher, but I actually give the edge to the Irish, who own much more impressive wins than the Nittany Lions, and have looked comparatively better against mutual opponents, such as the aforementioned USC.
4. Penn State
Thanks to Ohio State's capitulation vs. Michigan, and Penn State's own blowout of Maryland, the Nittany Lions now end up in the Big Ten Championship. It's a great accomplishment for James Franklin's squad, but, at least for the purposes of the playoff, could be a curse disguised as blessing. Penn State were on track to just quietly finish 11-1 with the sole loss coming by one score to one of the best teams in the country, Ohio State, which few bones could be made about. But, not only does that loss to the Buckeyes look slightly less excusable in the wake of the Michigan game, while this matchup vs. Oregon gives them an enormous opportunity at the top dog now, a loss here (particularly a significant one) could make many a committee member skeptical as to whether they can actually beat a good team, and highlight the lack of quality wins on their part.
5. Georgia
As insane as last Friday's game in Athens was, it was a perfect encapsulation of Georgia's season, wherein many a viewer, fan, and perhaps even Georgia coach has looked at the team and struggled to figure out if they're a legitimately elite team or downright mediocre. The slimmest of margins separated Georgia's fate in the playoff and this edition of the Couch Power 10; the game could have easily (and arguably should have) ended with an embarrassing and resumé-damaging home loss to unranked rivals Georgia Tech. But, thanks to a timely fumble, stingy goal-line defense and plenty of luck. the Dawgs magically pulled it out in 8OT, and ended up on the right side of the breaks, which are the margins we're playing with this year. Only a few times this season (vs. Clemson in Atlanta, at Texas, the second half vs. Tennessee) have they actually looked like the title contenders they were expected to be, yes, but they do finish the season 10-2 against the hardest schedule in the nation, and with a berth in their 4th straight SEC Championship Game. That's not nothing.
6. Tennessee
The Vols' offense has cut out on them at some of the worst times this season (the second half at Georgia, the first half vs. Alabama, the entirety of that brutal loss at Arkansas), but that was not the case on Saturday. Dylan Sampson and Dont'e Thornton Jr. rallied Tennessee from a big early deficit to blow past a plucky Vanderbilt, giving them their most resounding loss all year. Discourse abounds about whether the SEC is loaded or just chock-full of mediocre teams and as such, it's hard to gauge the level of most of its teams. But Tennessee arguably ends the season as the most quantifiable team in the SEC: often unreliable at QB, very good everywhere else, floor is a frustrating game where their offense fails to get out of first gear, ceiling is being among the best teams in the country.
7. Ohio State
Contrary to what immediate Buckeye reaction will tell you, Saturday was not the end of the world for Ohio State. The Buckeyes will still make the playoffs, and due to their two wins over Top 10 teams, and Top 25-ranked schedule strength, remain well-positioned for a home game in the First Round, even. Still, OSU's fourth straight loss to rivals Michigan was the worst one yet, by some margin: 20+ point favorites, at home, needing a win to clinch their spot in the Big Ten championship, and they lay an absolute egg, failing to reach the end zone more than once. A clear path still remains for perhaps the most talented team in America to win it all, but this loss plays at some very real questions about this team's true ceiling as a total unit.
8. SMU
The last three spots in the last Power 10 of the season belong to three of this year's best stories in college football. SMU's addition to the ACC was not a widely celebrated one, with the conference's premier members voting against it, media almost unilaterally mocking it, and Florida State going so far as to cite it in their lawsuit against the ACC as evidence of the conference's poor business acumen. Yet, everyone forgot that there was a season to play still, except for Rhett Lashlee and his team, whose blowout of California on Saturday put the finishing touches on an 11-1 season, and an unbeaten conference season in their first bite of ACC play. Concerns about SMU's body of work overall aren't without merit: unless the committee rank Louisville and/or Duke in their Top 25 tonight, Clemson in the ACC championship would be the Mustangs' first win over a ranked team, should they win it. But they can only play the teams they're scheduled to play, and in only 2 of their 12 games did they struggle: a 1-point win on the road at 9-3 Duke, and the 3-point loss to a Top 15, 10-win BYU team.
9. Boise State
From the Mustangs to the Broncos: the two wild horse teams share more than mascot similarity: both are poised to be unexpected party-crashers in the first 12-team playoff. Their résumé is similar too: 1 narrow loss on the road at a ranked team, 11 wins otherwise, with the majority of said wins being snoozers. Boise's loss (on the road at Oregon) is much more 'bragworthy,' but SMU's schedule has been more consistently solid and they haven't flirted with narrow margins nearly as much as the Broncos have. Still, this particular conversation is basically a moot point for Heisman candidate Ashton Jeanty and his team, who remain in line for not only a playoff spot but a first-round bye (likely in the Fiesta Bowl) with a win against a good UNLV team in the Mountain West Championship on Friday.
10. Indiana
On the one hand, Indiana's large loss to Ohio State in Week 12 confirmed many skeptics' concerns about how they would stack up with a truly elite team, and now it looks worse with OSU's immediate turnaround loss to Michigan. On the other hand, IU responded to that missed opportunity with a 66-0 beatdown of their in-state rivals, as many in college football world looked on morbidly to see if they were going to remove themselves from the playoff conversation. What's more, their only 1 of the 11 wins that was even remotely close was their win over, that's right, the same Michigan that just beat the #2 team at their home field. Is this an elite team? No. Is it a playoff team? Absolutely.
Just missed: Alabama, South Carolina, Arizona State, UNLV, Miami, the Jan. 2019-Aug. 2021 era of Mack Brown's UNC tenure
BONUS: Couch Playoff Bracket!
*denotes conference auto-bid
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