Grapevine, TX (SportsNetwork.com) – Oregon moved to No. 4 in the College
Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday and Ole Miss plummeted seven spots to No.
11 after its loss to Auburn over the weekend.
Mississippi State remained No. 1 for the second straight week after debuting
atop the rankings.
Fellow unbeaten Florida State kept its spot at No. 2, Auburn remained No. 3
and Oregon moved up one spot to No. 4.
The Ducks took over the spot held last week by Ole Miss, which lost to Auburn
on a goal-line fumble Saturday in a de facto elimination game.
There will be five more votes by the 12-member selection committee culminating
on Dec. 7, when the four teams that will play in the national semifinals on
Jan. 1 will be announced.
The winners of the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day will move on to
the national championship game on Jan. 12 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
Mississippi State (8-0) held off Arkansas 17-10 in its first game atop the
playoff rankings and faces Tennessee-Martin on Saturday, an appetizer to next
week’s game against No. 5 playoff team Alabama in Tuscaloosa.
Florida State (8-0), which won the last BCS National Championship Game, got
past Louisville 42-31 on Thursday and faces Virginia this week, while Auburn
(7-1) will host Texas A&M.
Oregon (8-1) routed Stanford 45-16 on Saturday and will play at Utah this
weekend.
The playoff replaces the oft-criticized Bowl Championship Series, which was in
place from 1998 until last season.
The rankings will be determined by a 13-member committee that meets in person
on Monday and Tuesday during the selection process. One voter, Archie Manning,
is on a health-related leave of absence this year.
The current voters include five university athletic directors and former U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“As we said last time, our meeting this week would begin with a clean sheet of
paper, and it did,” said Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long, who chairs the
selection committee. “We firmly believe this is one of the strengths of the
committee. We have 12 individuals who work each week to decide who the best
teams are in college football. We are not bound by last week’s results and we
watch the games with a fresh perspective each week.”
TCU, Kansas State, Michigan State, Arizona State and Notre Dame rounded out
this week’s top 10 behind No. 5 Alabama.
Ole Miss, Baylor, Nebraska, Ohio State, Oklahoma, LSU, Utah, UCLA, Arizona,
Georgia, Clemson, Duke, West Virginia, Georgia Tech and Wisconsin complete the
top 25.
