Ranked No. 15 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday, Arizona State heads into Saturday’s Big 12 championship looking to cap off an impressive season with a title win and automatic bid. (Photo by Spencer Barnes/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX — Win and in.
Despite the bickering about the College Football Playoff rankings from Eugene, Oregon, to Miami and everywhere in between, Arizona State controls its destiny Saturday. A win in Arlington, Texas, against the Iowa State Cyclones will send the Sun Devils to the College Football Playoff with the Big 12 championship and an automatic bid in hand.
The winner of Saturday’s title game will await its final ranking, but Tuesday’s latest rankings shed some light on what the future may hold. The Big 12 champion is currently projected as the 12th and final seed and would match up with Penn State in Happy Valley.
The rankings didn’t please Big 12 commissioner Brett Yorkmark, who said Wednesday that “time and time again, (committee members) are paying attention to logos versus resumes. … And in now way should a Group of Five champion be ranked above our champion.”
Boise State was ranked 10th in the poll.
Things could change in a hurry, as both No. 17 Clemson and No. 20 UNLV will play for the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and Mountain West Conference championship, respectively. If either team wins, ASU will strengthen its case to jump into one of the top four spots and receive a first-round bye.
Fresh off Saturday’s 49-7 thumping of the rival Arizona Wildcats Arizona State moved up one more spot to No. 15. The Sun Devils sit behind No.11 Alabama, No. 13 Ole Miss and No. 14 South Carolina, which all finished the regular season with three losses.
“We recognize when there are rivalry games … we realize they are packed with emotions,” said Warde Manuel, the CFP committee chair. “We evaluate them accordingly while still recognizing that it’s a very big game for both teams.”
The Sun Devils are just one game away from winning the conference in their debut season in the Big 12. They aren’t alone in that feat, though. If all the higher-seeded teams win Saturday in the “Power Four,” the four would achieve the same feat in their conference debuts, with No. 1 Oregon representing the Big Ten, No. 2 Texas the SEC, No. 8 SMU the ACC, and No. 15 Arizona State the Big 12.
Tuesday’s rankings resembled the March Madness bracket, with discussions surrounding bubble teams and programs that could steal a bid. Alabama (9-3) vaulted two spots, topping Miami (10-2), which suffered its second loss in three games. As the bracket currently stands, the Crimson Tide would be the last team in the field. If one of the lower-ranked teams wins their conference championship, though, they could end up on the outside looking in.
However, there may be another path for the Crimson Tide.
Manuel said Tuesday that there’s potential for SMU to drop below Alabama if it loses.
Although the CFP committee doesn’t determine rankings based on hypotheticals, Manuel’s response to the reporter’s question Tuesday felt like a massive statement that a team could be punished for losing in its conference championship game. It is especially pertinent to the Mustangs, ranked No. 8 Tuesday with an 11-1 record despite struggling to climb the rankings. If they were to lose to No. 17 Clemson and drop out in favor of a team whose resume is completed already, it could set a bad precedent in the future for the committee.
“Any team that is not playing (in a conference championship), we don’t have a data point to rearrange where we have these teams ranked,” Manuel said. “That is set in terms of how we see them going into the final week.
“Those teams who are not playing cannot be adjusted.”
Manuel’s final sentence seems to be the final crushing blow to the resumes of Miami, Ole Miss and South Carolina. With Alabama ranked higher than all three as the regular season concludes, there seems to be no path for the trio to earn a CFP bid. It is especially hard for Miami, ranked No. 6 one week ago but seemingly out of the race with a loss Saturday at No. 22 Syracuse (9-3) in the regular-season finale.
Despite Ohio State’s 13-10 upset loss against Michigan (7-5), and plenty of media outcry, the Buckeyes fell only four spots to No. 6 and have a bid to the CFP firmly locked while waiting to learn if they will host a first-round playoff game. Currently, OSU would be an 8-seed and host the 9th-seeded Tennessee, but that can change dramatically based on this weekend’s results.
After the dust settles from Friday and Saturday, the first-ever 12-team bracket will be finalized Sunday at 10 a.m., with four teams receiving a first-round bye, and four more hosting the first-ever playoff games being played at campus sites. No matter where everyone is seeded, or who gets in and who gets left out, it’s surely going to be a major spectacle in a year of parity in college football.
Dillingham and his team will travel to Arlington with a chance to do something the Sun Devils haven’t done in 14 years: win a conference championship. A new reward this year comes with that potential victory, being just a few games away from a national championship as well.
“It’s a reward for success …The best teams don’t always win, the most talented teams don’t always win … if you can find ways to win, that’s the reward,” ASU coach Kenny Dillingham said Monday. “Only two teams in our league can say that they put themselves in a position to win a championship.”
