CFB Playoff Race Blown Wide Open As Six Top-25 Teams Fall in Week 5

The debates for College Football Playoff berths are likely to be intensified following a particularly wild Week 5 that saw six teams in the Associated Press Top 25 rankings lose. 

Despite a schedule that did not have as much initial hype as the season-opening ones, Week 5 included losses for No. 3 Penn State, No. 4 LSU, No. 5 Georgia, No. 8 Florida State, No. 21 USC, and No. 24 TCU—with the Nittany Lions and Bulldogs in particular falling at home. 

Further elevating the chaos across college football were several games that required overtime or double overtime, including No. 6 Oregon’s upset of Penn State, No. 15 Tennessee surviving a scare from unranked Mississippi State, No. 16 Georgia Tech outlasting Wake Forest, and Virginia upsetting the Seminoles on Friday night. 

Irish Eyes Are Smiling

The new AP rankings released Sunday, again topped by No. 1 and defending national champion Ohio State, feature seven undefeated teams in the top 10. The likelihood of several two-loss teams again entering CFP consideration, however, is amplified as many top teams are still only beginning to enter the heart of their schedules, and conference title games await.

Among those teams could be Notre Dame, left for dead by many observers two weeks ago after falling to 0–2. The Fighting Irish have since defeated Purdue by 26 points and Arkansas by 43, and are now ranked No. 21.

“We’re all human. … The challenge is to continue to focus on what’s right in front of you, and what we’re guaranteed is this opportunity,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said on ESPN’s College GameDay.

The weekend’s upheaval has also left Georgia, now No. 12, with its lowest ranking in nearly five years after falling at home to Alabama. Mississippi, meanwhile, leaped from No. 13 to No. 4, its highest ranking since 2015, after upsetting LSU.

Last year’s CFP, the first played with a 12-team format, included seven two-loss teams and a three-loss Clemson team, as a two-loss SMU overtook a three-loss Alabama squad for the final slot in a choice that generated plenty of controversy. Discussion on enlarging the format remains stalled as Power 4 conferences are still at odds on numerous fronts, particularly how to allocate automatic bids.