College Football Week 8

This week in college football didn't feature any overly important match-ups and was called upset weekend by many college football analysts. Personally I didn't think that there were many surprising results, I think the only truly surprising result was Georgia Tech beating Florida State, and that's only because of how it happened. Georgia Tech is 3-5 but those five losses came to #9 Notre Dame, #18 Duke, #25 Pittsburgh, #6 Clemson,  and a soon to be ranked 6-1 North Carolina team. So the best 3-5 team in the country Georgia Tech finally had things go their way, they blocked a field goal and took it back all the way for a touchdown. I wouldn't be surprised if Florida State ended up with 3 losses, as they still have to play Clemson and Florida.

The other major upset would be USC taking down Utah, but as I said in a previous blog, USC is still a dangerous team and had a chance to ruin a playoff contenders season and may have done that against Utah. The game was actually very even, USC out-gained Utah by only 27 total yards, USC had only one more first down, and Utah was still in it at half time. However Utah turned the ball over 4 times and USC had the ball for nearly ten more minutes. On Thursday UCLA pounded California 40-24 and this was also not very surprising to me, UCLA is a pretty good football team, and they will get better as their talented freshman quarterback Josh Rosen gains experience.  They can still win the Pac-12 South and even win the Pac-12 championship, but are likely out of the college football playoff. I think that the Pac-12's best chance at a playoff team would be Stanford. The Cardinal still have to play Notre Dame, but they are home for that game, and have a relatively easy schedule outside that game. I believe that the playoff committee would pick at 12-1 Stanford team over a 12-1 Utah team due to brand recognition, and resume.

I believe there are a few games where the winner of one game should make the playoff, games like Notre Dame-Stanford, Ohio State-Michigan State, LSU-Alabama, and possibly TCU-Baylor. Personally my top 4 right now would be 1. Clemson 2. Ohio State 3. LSU 4. Baylor. But with the big match-ups I named before and the fact that each Big 12 contender has to face each other I would not be surprised if those rankings change a whole lot by the end of the year. I believe the Big 12 will end up with no undefeated teams and will miss the playoff for a second consecutive year. So how I see it shaking down at the end of the year is 1. Ohio State 2. Clemson 3. Alabama 4. Notre Dame.