CFP Rankings: Top four unchanged heading into conference championships

With the final regular season for most of the Power 5 conferences over, only one team appears to have locked up a spot in the College Football Playoff — Oklahoma.

The Sooners finished its regular season with a win against Oklahoma State and earned the Big 12 championship.

The rest of the top four were unchanged from last week with Clemson staying at No. 1, Alabama at No. 2 and Iowa at No. 4. However, all of those teams have championship games this weekend.

No. 1 Clemson still has to play No. 10 North Carolina in the ACC title game, No. 2 Alabama has to play No. 18 Florida in the SEC title game and No. 4 Iowa and No. 5 Michigan State will play what is essentially a CFP play-in game during the Big Ten championship.

Ohio State is sitting at No. 6 and hoping for a shot if Clemson or Alabama loses. However, the committee placed a strong emphasis on conference champions during last year’s final rankings, and the Buckeyes won’t play in their title game.

But sneaking in behind Ohio State is a two-loss Stanford team that’s coming off a win to Notre Dame and will play USC in the Pac-12 title game against USC. The No. 7 Cardinal would have the edge over Ohio State by being a conference champion, but they also would have one more loss than the Buckeyes.

The four tenets the CFP uses in case there are teams that are too close to call are (in order): Championships won, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition (if occurred) and comparative outcomes of common opponents (without incenting margin of victory).

“In the committee’s eyes, if a team has not clearly separated itself above another and they are clearly equal, then we apply those four criteria of conference champion, head-to-head and those factors,” CFP committee chairman Jeff Long said. “So, they don’t come in until the committee reaches basically a deadlock and then we add in the conference championships.”

The one championship many will be fixated on will be on the ACC title game because many believe it provides the greatest opportunity for an upset. However, North Carolina at No. 10 did not make up enough ground in the past week to get close enough to scoop up an open top four spot. While the Tar Heels would be able to boast being a conference champion and being the only team to knock off the No. 1 team in the country, their schedule doesn’t stack up to some of the teams in front of it. The Tar Heels lost to a woeful South Carolina team at the beginning of the season and two of its wins came against FCS teams.

The only other matchup really worth watching this weekend would be the American Athletic Conference title game between No. 19 Houston and No. 22 Temple. Those two teams are the highest ranked Group of Five teams this week, and it would be fair to assume the winner of the game would represent the Group of Five in a New Year’s Six Bowl.