Ole Miss rises in latest College Football Playoff rankings

Ole Miss lost a coach and moved up a spot anyway.

Notre Dame didn’t lose a thing but the Irish fell.

The release Tuesday of the latest College Football Playoff rankings produced its fair share of eye-openers and head-scratchers — plenty to talk about before the final rankings and the actual pairings for the 12-team playoff come out this weekend after a slate of conference title games.

Undefeated Ohio State and Indiana remained at 1 and 2 in the rankings, while Georgia moved to third and Texas Tech rose to No. 4.

The rest of the top 12: Oregon, Mississippi, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Alabama, Notre Dame, BYU and Miami.

Even though Mississippi coach Lane Kiffin left the school for LSU last weekend, the selection committee moved the Rebels up one spot to No. 6. Committee chairman Hunter Yuracheck explained the panel talked about the upheaval in Oxford but didn’t quite know what to make of it.

“We don’t have any way to evaluate what Ole Miss looks like, plays like, without its head coach,” Yurachek said. “We can only evaluate what we know, and what we know now is Ole Miss is an 11-1 football team.”

Notre Dame is a 10-2 football team, same as Alabama, but those two flip-flopped spots after wins last week.

The Tide is now ranked No. 9 — in a much better position to grab an at-large berth if they lose to Georgia in the SEC title game — while Notre Dame is No. 10, a little more on the bubble despite a 10-game winning streak.

Yurachek described the debate pitting two of the nation’s most storied programs as one “that has really split our committee room.”

“We all think highly of both teams,” he said. “There are some in the Alabama camp, some in the Notre Dame camp..

In the end, he said, it came down to Alabama’s 27-20 win over Auburn (5-7) in a rivalry game on the road getting more run than Notre Dame’s 49-20 romp at 4-8 Stanford.

In another move that could have a major impact, the committee put James Madison of the Sun Belt Conference at No. 25 — higher than unranked Duke, which plays No. 17 Virginia for the Atlantic Coast Conference title.

If Duke and James Madison win, then James Madison could deny the ACC an automatic bid.

Those go to the five best-ranked conference titlists, with no guarantee to the Power 4 leagues. The SEC, Big Ten and Big 12 will earn spots, while the American from the Group of 5 seems to have a hold on one of those, with No. 20 Tulane and No. 24 North Texas slated for that title game Friday.

It means the fifth and final will either go to the ACC or the Sun Belt, where James Madison plays Troy on Friday for the championship.

The final rankings come out Sunday, the day after the title games determine the five automatic qualifiers for the 12-team bracket. The playoffs start Dec. 19 and end a month later with the title game outside Miami.

Conference watch

ACC: Any lingering notion that the expanded playoff was designed to get the 12 best teams playing for a title has been obliterated by what’s going on in this league. No. 17 Virginia’s in if it wins the league, but the ACC’s best team, No. 12 Miami, is not in the title game and needs help. … Yurachek left some glimmer of hope when he said even teams that don’t play this week will be reevaluated.

So, maybe No. 11 BYU loses and maybe Miami moves up a spot? And maybe that move puts Miami and Notre Dame next to each other in the ranking, which leads the committee to reconsider Miami’s opening-week win over the Irish? … That’s an awful lot of maybes for a system that was supposed to make this easy.

Big 12: This one seems simple. BYU’s only loss this season was 29-7 to Texas Tech. A similar result would seem to give the committee a reason to drop the Cougars. … A BYU win is bad for Notre Dame.

Big Ten: This is a three-team league — Ohio State, Indiana, Oregon, with the only question being whether the Buckeyes-Hoosiers loser in the league title game will stay in the top four and get a first-round bye.

SEC: Vanderbilt, which destroyed Tennessee and knocked the Vols out of the rankings, stayed at 14. Texas, with its impressive win over Texas A&M, moved up three to No. 13. Yurachek explained the Commodores don’t have a signature win against a team that’s currently ranked.

They must be loving that reasoning in Nashville. … Either way, Alabama’s move to No. 9 makes things all but impossible for the ‘Dores and not much better for the ’Horns, whose loss at Florida was a killer, Yurachek explained. … The conference will still have more teams than anyone (four or more) in the bracket and commissioner Greg Sankey will probably be angling for more.

Projected first-round matchups

No. 12 Tulane at No. 5 Oregon: Ducks losing offensive coordinator Will Stein (Kentucky) and Tulane losing its coach Jon Sumrall (to Florida, though Sumrall is staying with the Green Wave until the season ends.)

No. 11 Virginia at No. 6 Ole Miss: Now that Lane is gone, will all the Rebels players and coaches stick around for this one?

No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7 Texas A&M: And to think, Irish coach Marcus Freeman was posturing for home-field advantage a week ago and some in Aggieland were crying about not being ranked No. 1.

No. 9 Alabama at No. 8 Oklahoma: OU’s win over the Tide three weeks ago changed the season for both programs.