Season for a long time is interesting
College football fans really can’t complain this year. In recent decades, a season has rarely been as varied as before. Instead of a dull march by the declared main candidates to participate in the playoffs and win the title, there are constant falls of the favorites, and in the race for the twelve places in the playoffs there are often teams that have never been counted as the weakest of their conferences. Of course, one must be afraid that the most unlucky teams, all of them will not be defeated, BYU, Indiana, Iowa State and the “Service Academies” Army and Navy, which for the first time in 1960 APzeitider reappeared in deplatch in 1960 There will be more defeats in the coming weeks and two teams will play in the final in January that were expected from the outset to be able to get this far. But the uprising of the little ones is a breath of fresh air for the time being and reminds us that variety is part of the core brand of sporting competitions.
– Ten teams from the AP Preseason 25 and are no longer ranked in the top 25: Michigan (9th), Florida State (10th), Utah (12th), Oklahoma (16th), Oklahoma State (17th), Arizona (21st), Kansas (22nd), USC (23rd), North Carolina State (24th) and Iowa (25th). Last season there were six at the same time.
– Not the preseason Top 25 teams and no less: Oregon, Penn State and Miami. Last year there were six.
– Two teams in the top ten of the preseason rankings had lost more than once: Alabama and Mississippi. Admittedly, last year there were three (Clemson, LSU and USC).
– Half of the top ten in the AP Preseason Top 25 are no longer in the top ten (last season three), two of them (Michigan and Florida State) are no longer in the top 25 at all (last season one).
The downside of this development, which is positive in terms of variety: There were already four different teams in first place in the AP Top 25: Georgia, Texas, Alabama and Oregon. Last year there was only one thing – Georgia, which only lost its top position, which it had held since the preseason top 25, to the eventual national champion Michigan after the narrow defeat against Alabama in the SEC Championship Game (24:27).
But now a whole bunch of teams that you would never have thought have a realistic chance of reaching the playoffs. Five have already been mentioned above. Three of them – Iowa State, BYU and Indiana – are currently ranked 10, 11 and 13. There are also SMU, Boise State, Illinois and Pittsburgh, which are further down in the top 25, as well as a few unranked “long shots” like Syracuse , Washington State and UNLV.
Admittedly, not all of them will still be in the running when the Playoff Selection Committee announces the twelve playoff participants after the games on December 7th, simply because some of them still have to play against each other. Pittsburgh, for example, still faces SMU and Syracuse in the ACC. In addition, the Panthers must play against Clemson and Syracuse against Miami. Of these three, SMU has the best chance of not losing a game before the ACC Championship Game, but would probably face Clemson or Miami in it. The two playoff candidates from the Mountain West Conference, Boise State and UNLV, also play against each other. They meet this Saturday in Las Vegas. Since both of them already have a loss on their account and come from one of the weaker conferences, it is clear that only the winner can dream of participation in the playoffs.
The situation in the Big Ten is ambiguous for Indiana. With Oregon and Ohio State ahead of them and a game at Ohio State still to play (November 23), on the one hand it will be difficult to reach the conference championship game. On the other hand, that might actually be the better scenario for the Hoosiers. Sounds counterintuitive? Nope. The calculation: You win four of the last five games, lose against Ohio State and miss out on making it to the conference finals, but you also don’t run the risk of suffering a second defeat there. With an 11-1 record, the team would almost certainly be in the playoffs. The problem: In the clear win against Nebraska on Saturday, one of the guarantors of the surprising promotion, QB Kurtis Rourke, was injured and will be out for an indefinite period of time. With Rourke, the rest of the program (in addition to the game at Ohio State, home games against Washington, Michigan and Purdue as well as an away game at Michigan State) would have been mastered with a 4-1 record. Now it’s time to wait and see how the team performs without Rourke.
The two undefeated playoff candidates from the Big Twelve, Iowa State and BYU, have the best chances of reaching the knockout round, perhaps even together. The earliest the two can meet is in the conference finals. If both achieve this without defeat, then the loser would also have a good chance with an 11-1 record. The winner would be there as champion of one of the Power Four conferences anyway. This scenario is possible, but both teams are not unconditionally so strong that they would not always be good for a defeat. Both have narrowly won several times, and on the last game day Both got the decisive points first with the last attack of the game – BYU against Oklahoma State and Iowa State against Central Florida, with the same result (38:35). BYU has the slightly easier remaining program. The biggest danger came from the game at Central Florida this Saturday. Iowa State’s toughest tasks include home games against the recently significantly improved Cincinnati (November 16) and Kansas State (November 30), which itself still has every chance of winning the conference title and making it into the playoffs. . In the remaining weeks of the regular season, the question is what will happen to the surprise teams at least as exciting as the situation at the top of the Top 25.
Hoch – 22.10.2024
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