NCAA Football Report (Week 7)
If there is one thing that this season in the NCAA is teaching all fans and players it is that there is no week to take off.
Every week it seems like another big program falls and every week it throws the rankings into a tailspin.
Nobody really knows what is going to happen and after Week 7 everything got muddier than it has been in a long time.
It all came on games that not many were watching as Friday Night football turned out to be the place to watch games this week.
That is where Clemson took their first loss of the season as the defending champions could not get past the Syracuse Orange.
As the weeks progressed it seemed like Clemson was on their way to another National Championship game against the Crimson Tide.
It wasn’t making for any massive hype as the two teams had already played two years in a row for the title.
After splitting the series it seemed like they were going to easily get a shot at playing a third and deciding game for the title.
The SEC wasn’t strong enough to knock off Alabama and the ACC was showing that they weren’t going to be enough to unseat Clemson.
That all changed on Friday night when the Tigers took the loss and that dreaded term “Clemsoning” made its way back.
After a week when the #3 team dropped their first game of the year the #2 team was handed their first loss.
It upset the rankings but one loss can be dealt with as everyone just starts moving up the rankings.
That got a lot tougher when Washington State took their first loss of the season later Friday night against the Cal Bears.
The streaking Cougars were looking like a bit of a Cinderella story this year and then they were entirely outclassed against the Bears.
The 37-2 drubbing ended any hope of them finding their way to the playoff this year as they had to do a lot to get there including going undefeated.
That type of loss against an unranked team makes the climb even tougher and is not going to do them any favours.
Then the full weekend began and top ten teams continued to fall with Washington taking a loss to Arizona State and Auburn lost to LSU.
Four teams in the top five could not keep their great seasons going and although some still have that shot at the playoff things are getting difficult.
The rankings right now are pretty good to get an idea of what is happening in the league but there won’t be any significant polls until the end of October.
October 31 will be the first College Football Playoff rankings of the season and in the grand scheme of things in the NCAA, they are the only rankings that matter.
The committee that makes the rankings is going to have a tough time this year as they will need to begin weighing a lot more than usual to figure out who the top teams are.
The only thing that seems for sure is the Alabama Crimson Tide as they are the strongest team in the country.
There is no doubt about that and unless they fall victim to the issues that the rest of the top teams have they seem pretty sure to be considered #1 in the rankings.
After that, it is going to become a lot more difficult as the committee needs to look at a lot of one-loss teams that are big programs and weight them against a lot of undefeated teams.
As it stands the media is looking to those undefeated teams to make up the playoff with Penn State, Georgia and TCU making up the playoff behind Alabama.
All are undefeated but there are few people who think they will stay undefeated through the rest of the season.
Meanwhile, one-loss teams like Ohio State and Clemson are still well within the running with both still in the top ten.
If they can make their way through the rest of the season unbeaten, some will play each other, the committee will need to weigh-in on what they think matters most.
It could provide a new set of playoff teams just at a point where things were beginning to get stale.
It could breathe new life into the playoff but if none of them can beat Alabama the parity for the rest of the playoff teams doesn’t matter.
The voting is going to be tough this year and there are no easy answers making the debate a good one through the final weeks before the CFP rankings.
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