The third College Football Playoff rankings of the season were released Tuesday, with Georgia remaining at No. 1 for the second consecutive week.
In a week where both Oregon and UCLA suffered upsets at home, to Washington and Arizona, respectively, the Pac-12 may have crushed its chances of having a team in this year’s playoff. The last time two top-10 teams in the Pac-12 lost at home during the same weekend was October 2014, when the Ducks suffered a 31–24 loss to Arizona and Utah pulled off the upset against UCLA.
Georgia, coming off a dominant win over Mississippi State, will face Kentucky on Saturday and close the regular season against Georgia Tech in the Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate rivalry matchup.
In total, eight ranked teams suffered losses over the weekend. After the Bulldogs, Ohio State (10–0) and Michigan (10–0) retained their spots at No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, while Tennessee (9–1) and TCU (10–0) round out the top five.
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TCU defeated Texas in a tough defensive battle, something that CFP chair Boo Corrigan noted as the reason the Horned Frogs retained its spot at No. 4.
“For their [TCU] defense to give up three points… the other was a scoop and score by Texas … but as you look at the whole package again, they continue to improve,” Corrigan said on the broadcast. “They’ve earned the opportunity to be in the top four.”
Meanwhile, after a 55–17 win against Colorado on Friday, the committee felt that the dominance on offense by Southern California under first-year head coach Lincoln Riley paved the way for the Trojans’ latest ranking at No. 7.
“They’ve continued to win games,” Corrigan said. “They have the one loss … in a really emotional game at Utah. They got the win over Oregon State. They’ve continued to win, they’ve continued offensively scoring 40-plus points a game, having over 500 yards a game and that really drove the day for them.”
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Here are the full second College Football Playoff rankings:
- Georgia
- Ohio State
- Michigan
- TCU
- Tennessee
- LSU
- Southern California
- Alabama
- Clemson
- Utah
- Penn State
- Oregon
- North Carolina
- Ole Miss
- Kansas State
- UCLA
- Washington
- Notre Dame
- Florida State
- UCF
- Tulane
- Oklahoma State
- Oregon State
- NC State
- Cincinnati
